Comment by gumby271
3 months ago
That's what was confusing to me. It's one thing for Apple to add wifi aware by force, it would be another for them to completely reimplement Airdrop with it. I don't think they were required to do that.
3 months ago
That's what was confusing to me. It's one thing for Apple to add wifi aware by force, it would be another for them to completely reimplement Airdrop with it. I don't think they were required to do that.
They were required to drop AWDL, yes. They had to reimplement AirDrop.
https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
They weren't specifically required to drop AWDL, they were just required to implement WiFi-Aware in such a manner that neither technology had an advantage.
In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.
I doubt they would've had to implement any specific protocol if they had just opened up AWDL, but I suppose they'd rather keep that closed to maintain the ability to guard their walled garden in non-EU devices.
> In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.
They need Airdrop to work with phones who haven’t upgraded, so doesn’t feel like a waste to me. And they already have working AWDL code, so it’s just maintenance, probably not a ton of work.
They are not required to drop awdl, they just have to support wifi aware as well.
So does Mac OS support Wifi Aware now? I didn't think so, which is confusing if Airdrop still works between iOS and Mac OS.