Comment by mschuster91

8 months ago

The interesting question is authentication/authorization - at the moment, macOS greatly simplifies this as long as both devices belong to the same Apple ID. On the opposite side, Samsung does the same.

How will that work out?

22 comments

mschuster91

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lxgr  8 months ago

That's certainly a nice feature, but in comparison to the elephant in the room, i.e. wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment, it's completely insignificant.

  • tsujamin  8 months ago

    > wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment

    P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

    Maybe I'm an edge case, but probably 90% of my Airdrop usage is between my own devices, so the platform taking care of the authentication story is of more utility than cross-platform transfers. If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal since, if the source is my phone in the first place, it's probably not a huge transfer anyway.

    • lxgr  8 months ago

      > there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

      That's exactly my point: Apps – which users have to install, which requires an Internet connection.

      Also all of them routing data through some centralized server, often not end-to-end encrypted.

      > If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal

      Approximately none of the people that I've Airdropped photos to in the past have Signal installed, and even if they do, there isn't always an Internet connection available. Airdrop also sends the original photo including all metadata and resolution, which is another big reason I like it.

      On top of that, I've Airdropped photos to complete strangers (e.g. if I managed to get a nice shot of something on a tour) with which I didn't have any desire to exchange numbers, and I just would not have been able to send the photo to Android.

      1 reply →

    • mschuster91  8 months ago

      > P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

      Yeah, via their server, which means it's slow even if you have wifi, requires valuable data credit if not, or it requires the installation of a companion app on the other device and putting the other device in the same network.

      3 replies →

  • dmitrygr  8 months ago

    Nice of you to state your option as fact. Now let me try. Compat with Android is “completely insignificant” but magical auto-auth based on Apple ID is the “elephant in the room”. See how that works?

    • lxgr  8 months ago

      I meant the opposite: Cross-platform compatibility is what’s sorely missing, and authentication is only a cherry on top, so I don’t think it ought to be a blocker.

      2 replies →

api  8 months ago

Vanilla P2P Wifi is amazing for the possibilities it unlocks, but unfortunately most developers can't do security to save their lives. There will be a lot of insecure apps.

bigfish24  8 months ago

For something like AirDrop this will need to be sorted out, but already work occurred to reverse engineer this: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop

Would be cool if an open standard on auth forms on top of this.