People keep mentioning Wi-Fi Aware with this, but so far haven't seen anyone actually prove that this is the case.
Apple undoubtedly added Wi-Fi Aware support to iOS https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware, but its not clear whether iOS actually supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware. Apple clearly hasn't completely dropped AWDL for AirDrop, because you can still AirDrop from iOS 26 to earlier devices.
Note that the Ars Technica article never directly makes the claim that Apple supports Airdrop over Wi-Fi Aware. The title is two independent statements - "The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop" - that's true.
> Google doesn’t mention it in either Quick Share post, but if you’re wondering why it’s suddenly possible for Quick Share to work with AirDrop, it can almost certainly be credited to European Union regulations imposed under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Again, they're just theorising. They never directly make the claim. Would love on Hacker News for someone to do some Hacking and actually figure it out for real!
In 2020 Google's Project Zero found a zero-click remote RCE in Apple's AWDL implementation. So at least some folks at Google are fully equipped to build a reverse engineered implementation. Discussion on that awhile back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270184
It’s funny how we’re all trying to piece together the stack from bits and obscure clues. Would be so cool if Apple and Google finally embrace their role as “essential public infrastructure” and release their specs, interoperate, etc.. so one doesn’t end up trapped one way or another when picking a personal device.
It's frustrating how much people want this to be an EU win they'll fabricate evidence. The same happened with RCS in iOS, everybody jumped in to credit it to the EU, when you can find the document spelling out how RCS is a requirement for China.
Don't forget that Apple is feeling sore and playing the petulant child in their PR regarding EU regulations, especially regarding the digital markets act. They don't want to appear to give in the EU, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Apple doesn't want to admit that the EU forced them.
There is very little literature about Chinese requirements rolled out
and when there is, its talked about as American tech companies bowing to an authoritarian regime as opposed to fighting a burgeoning market force acting on behalf of consumers and the American tech companies losing that fight
the latter is how the EU work is syndicated
in between is that there likely is no fight with Chinese regulators alongside an unwillingness to alter access to that market
I don't care which sovereign state or union forces the trillion dollar tech giant to behave. I'm just glad it happened. And I applaud China if this was their victory.
I want it to happen with a thousand times more intensity for Apple and Google.
We should own these devices. We shouldn't be subsistence farmers on the most important device category in the world.
They need to be opened up to competition, standards, right to repair, privacy, web app installs, browser choice, messaging, etc. etc.
They shouldn't be strong arming tiny developers or the entire automotive industry. It's vastly unfair. And this strip mining impacts us as consumers.
Imo kinda same about usb-c on iphone. The writing was on the wall that they were transitioning devices away from lightning to usb-c, a standard they too had their hands in.
Especially so when wanting to position the pro model iphones as professional cameras with external storage capable of doing decent levels of prores to boot, they werent about to make lightning ssds to do the job.
The only thing perhaps expedited was the push to have it on base model iphones sooner.
If the EU forced Apple to adopt Wi-Fi Aware then Apple would just fence it to EU users.
The attempt of trying to paint this as a powerplay by the EU is tenuous:
- Apple, along with Microsoft and Intel are founding members of the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose objective was to introduce a standard of interoperability through Wi-Fi Aware.1
- This work commenced long before the EU showed any interest in regulating tech.
- Apple have a pretty solid history of fencing EU-mandated changes to EU devices.
- Microsoft's Windows, also deemed by the EU as a "gatekeeper" hasn't deployed Wi-Fi Aware in Windows. With no public plans to do so.2
Oh, look what "over-regulation" does, forcing companies to comply to standards so they can't vendor lock-in their users (this happened with the iphone charging port too, from the apple specific port to usb-c).
Guess this type of consumer-benefic changes wouldn't happen in the land of "freedom".
I think the land of “freedom” knows that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
It's likely that without laws such as the DMCA, there would already be easier, legally legitimate ways to circumvent Apples technology preventing interoperability. So as usual the new regulations try to cancel out the problems caused by the previous regulation, while having their own side effects that require future regulation to cancel out, ad infinitum.
A positive effect from regulation does not rebut the general argument against government regulation of industry.
The problem with regulation isn’t that there are never any positive effects, of course there are.
The problem is it’s impossible to reliably avoid adding substantial friction to life via overly broad regulation that is not applicable but has to be followed anyway, or outdated but still-in-effect regulation that is not applicable but has to be followed anyway, at least.
If this only bothered huge companies then I would say cost of doing business, who cares, etc, but it actually affects things like how cities and towns are designed, how expensive housing is, how expensive medical treatment is, etc.
It's unclear exactly what you're arguing, but I think if you are arguing that, because of the unavoidable substantial friction caused by regulation, we shouldn't have any regulation of industry at all... I think it's trivial to find examples where banning all regulation of industry would make the world a much, much worse place. Much worse than the friction.
Even though overly broad regulation is a risk, I don't believe little/no regulation is an option either. I don't think the US's consumer protection mechanisms work, and I'm happy to accept the downsides of the EU's systems that come with the upsides of regulation.
I really wish microeconomics was a high-school or secondary school required course. It's one of the most applicable to life and voters well-studied disciplines that describes the effects of certain actions towards or away from a competitive market, market elasticity and barriers to entry, explains positive and negative externalities of government action, and how those actions affect consumer pricing and supply (a lot of the topics here and below). Without studying this topic we view words with different underlying assumptions or definitions and it's a lot more effort / time / replies to not talk around each other. It's like two people who only use Windows for Instagram trying to argue about why Apt requiring Rust is good or bad. I'm not weighing in for or against the topic in this thread or its replies, just a plug to study Microeconomics if this stuff interests you!
I mean, housing and medical treatment are more expensive in the US because the market is unregulated and so the capital exploits the poor who can't do otherwise for those basic needs.
So they forced Apple to drop an Apple proprietary thing in favor of… a Wi-Fi standard Apple helped develop specifically to replace their proprietary thing.
Not quite as strong as the headline makes the case sound.
Apple said from the day that they made lightning cables that it would be supported for 10 years. They literally contractually guaranteed that to third party manufacturers in exchange for them creating a massive availability of cables for Apple users.
The EU “forced them” to switch to the standard they helped develop (USB C) on the 11th year after developing lighting. I’m sure it was all the EUs doing.
Apple also helped develop ARM, but I believe nobody likes to talk about that.
I wonder when the Europe is going to open up European companies like ASML, who are pretty much the de facto monopolies in their field. I believe the Nexperia incident showed that there's also a lot of political and national reasons behind such decisions, not just creating open and fair markets.
Users all got to complain that the EU are the meanies responsible for their old wires and chargers and accessory no longer being compatible, but it seems infinitely more likely that Apple was going to adopt USB-C on largely the same schedule even if the EU didn't intercede.
To be clear, Apple had already moved their laptops and computers to USB-C -- long in advance of almost any one else -- and had moved their iPad Pros and Air to USB-C, building out the accessory set supporting the same, years before the EU decree. Pretty convenient when they get to blame the EU for their smartphones making the utterly inevitable move.
Apple used USB-C on the iPhone 15 and 16 without being forced to do so. If Apple was indeed forced to use USB-C they would have postponed it to the 17.
Do you also think Apple was forced to use USB-C on the iPad and MacBook?
It is also worth noting that Android wasn’t using the standard as well. If they had, this would have been day 0 interoperability for Android phones. Instead, it is a single phone model released a couple months after iOS 26.
Hah, right? Everyone understands that Apple wouldn't have done anything by themselves if it wasn't for the DMA.
The whole selling point of Apple was that as long as you're inside the ecosystem, you'll get the smoothest experience. Well, now the law says that devices, apps and products from third parties should be able to be used on an iPhone as seamlessly as Apple's own products, of course they wouldn't have given that up willingly.
And that's how regulations work. The very companies targeted by regulations often design and push for them. By doing so they gain a competitive advantage, price out smaller rivals, and move closer to becoming a monopoly. Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor, talks about this in his book Competitive Strategy.
The moat gets mighty large when the government regulators start making it bigger. That's one of the advantages that the Mag 7 has now - it's not just the scale but it's also the compliance burden for new entrants.
Well they forced a standard that anybody can use to support wirelessly sending files to nearby devices. That's a huge chain and taking a few bricks out of the garden wall.
I literally do not care about the wanky culty Android this Apple that stuff. I just want to plug my phone into my Mac and have it be able to read it, regardless of what phone that is. When someone needs to send me a document, I don't want them to have to change how they send it based on what device I have. Regulation and enforcing common interoperability standards is good for consumers; I don't care whose implementation wins out, just that all my devices support it.
It is literally correct. My point was I think it implies the EU had to force a totally belligerent Apple (which we’ve certainly seen) instead of Apple already working on this and EU perhaps speeding the timeline a little.
If a law forced Apple to do good for everyone, not just a small group of people, isn't that a good thing? It wasn't exactly that AirDrop got legislated, but thanks to the DMA, AirDrop (and other things) are within scope and they now have to make things more seamless for everyone. Win-win no?
I wonder if it's related to Apple's change from AWDL to Wi-Fi Aware, but AirDrop seems much more reliable on iOS 26. I can send to multiple people at once and they often all succeed, but most importantly, if one transfer fails or is cancelled, I can retry and it works. In older versions of iOS, a failed transfer seemed to block all future attempts until the phone was restarted.
the weird one for me is that if I hit share, and then hit the airdrop target, it doesn't work, but if go into airdrop and then select the same target, then works. Apple, fix your shit, yo.
Regulators never manage to design good products, but they’re weirdly good at accidentally clearing technical roadblocks that incumbents had no incentive to touch.
This is what "interoperability" actually looks like in practice: nobody forces Apple to ship AirDrop-for-Android, they just force them off a proprietary stack and onto a public standard, and suddenly Google can meet them on neutral ground. The EU didn’t create a feature, it removed Apple’s ability to say "we technically can’t."
Also notice the asymmetry: once both sides sit on Wi-Fi Aware, Apple gets basically nothing by embracing Quick Share, but Google and users get a ton from being able to talk to AirDrop. So the market on its own would never converge on this, because the only player who could unlock the value had the least reason to. You need a regulator to make the defection from proprietary to standard mandatory, then "open" just looks like someone finally flipping a bit that was always there.
Google most likely reimplemented AWDL, and the article is wrong. Sure the EU's actions will affect the optics, but Apple will be in the clear if they decide to nuke this.
An additional benefit is that the Wi-Fi standard also means that the weird account requirements on Google's Nearby Share can be avoided by independent implementations (i.e. on Windows or Linux or maybe rooted Android, iOS and macOS already have it of course).
"Contacts only mode" will always be a challenge, but at least the "I just want to share a file without Google watching me" use case is now resolved by Google implementing a standard that doesn't involve them.
Unfortunately, this is Pixel 10 exclusive for now, for some reason. I expect Samsung to pick this up eventually as well, but I'm not sure if Google will be able to backport this tech through Google Play Services the way they did with Nearby Share on older phones.
Qualcomm has confirmed it's coming to Snapdragon phones soon[0], which maybe hints that it's dependent on the SoC drivers? Samsung uses a mix of Snapdragon and their own Exynos, but I can't see them not releasing it to their Snapdragon phones when others do, and then they pretty much have to release it to their Exynos phones too.
An implementation of AWDL on Linux requires a Wi-Fi card that supports "active monitor mode with frame injection". [1] I looked into using it with an Intel Wi-Fi card I had and it appeared mine wasn't supported. I'm guessing the situation is similar on Android in terms of SoC support.
The account requirement for nearby share is, as I understand it, to enable "contacts only" mode, which is how you prevent people from receiving random dickpics the second they try out the protocol and permanently turn the feature off afterwards. I think NS also has some kind of cloud transfer backup connection in case local transfers don't work (using Samsung's cloud), but I'm not 100% sure if that's related.
The account requirement can already be avoided using existing implementations of standard QuickShare (i.e. https://henriqueclaranhan.github.io/rquickshare/) but those are limited to devices sharing the same WiFi connection. However, as there is no contact sharing between iOS and Android, interoperability basically forces Google to pick between "Google account optional" and "doesn't work with iOS".
The more tragic thing is that the US government really does not care about consumers in general - otherwise they would have ensured standards even for the big megacorporations to adhere to.
And the consequences? The World's favourite technology is designed by Americans in America by America-headquarted companies. And then the rest of the world buys it and loves it.
The UK has ARM. The Netherlands has ASML. But those are B2B suppliers. Europe, with it's regulatory overreach, has very few consumer technology companies of any consequence
Yes same, you bump, you put iPhones on to op each other, you enable "findable by other". And still you may be messing around for minutes. Then a larger transfer starts... But fails half way for 6 times.
It's the best way (if it works!) to transfer full quality live images quickly, but otherwise I'd be happier just using Signal.
It's within range because it works, but requires some twisting and arm waving to get it to work from one room to the next, no Faraday shields in the home.
Then again, I transferred 4 iPhone photos to the imac 2 feet away and it failed. Worked on the next try. It's flakey as hell, and this is a 3rd generation iPhone SE and M2 mac mini. Not exactly old. I really hate bluetooth.
I got an old Time Capsule at the thrift store, that checked out but I haven't made use of it. It might be time. FWIW, I got PhotoSync app (not free) long ago so as to share photos with "everything" and it runs in the background on the mac, but I stupidly hold to the notion that whatever comes with the operating system otta work.
I'm libertarian, but I have to say watching the EU torment Apple has been delightful and one of the stronger arguments for muscular regulatory action.
The USB-C thing just made everything better. It cost Apple basically nothing---maybe a few million/year of profit, which for a company that's worth $3 trillion is nothing, and it made my and many other people's lives quite a bit more convenient.
Same with this Airdrop thing, and same with RCS (although there's some reporting that RCS had more to do with China than the EU).
Eventually, someone is going to break open iMessage, and poor Apple will actually have to compete again for customers. Maybe they'll innovate something more interesting than Airpods Ultra Mega Pro Max or a thinner phone.
Apple made major contributions to USB-C and adopted it a decade ago in their MacBooks. They were committed to lightning for 10 years starting in 2012-ish, so usb-c was likely inevitable in iOS devices.
However I would preferred a backwards compatibility lightning 2.0 upgrade. Cleaning a usb-c port is a huge pain and they are more prone to pocket lint clogging than lightning.
While I really like the convenience of not having multiple different cables to charge my devices when travelling, I agree with you on cleaning the usb-c port. In that respect, the lightning design was a lot more elegant and made more sense for a pocketable device.
Careful on what you wish for. The same regulatory action can be (is) being used for Chat Control (that dropped off the main page for some reason). Ultimately neither power center acts for the general interest.
> The USB-C thing just made everything better. It cost Apple basically nothing
It made all the iPhone docks/speakers/etc. obsolete. The last time that happened, when Apple swapped the old 30 pin connector for lightning, it pissed off a fair number of customers.
This time they could blame the EU which was likely a huge plus.
iPhone docks and speakers were already obsolete. They had a moment during the 30-pin era, but its been long since Bluetooth, Carplay took over in any mainstream use.
You're a libertarian but regulatory intervention made everything about the market better and a better world for everyone involved with a relatively small change that was being stubbornly refused by a company for a small marginal benefit to themselves?
Sure, because I think that, ultimately excessive regulation stifles innovation. I mean, heck, the EU is looking to effectively dismantle GDPR because they're worried that it's going to cause them to miss out on the AI boom.
My point was just that Apple is such an outrageously bad actor (and the USB-C and Airdrop rules so beneficial) that these rules were getting even a very pro-market person like me to at least be open to the idea of regulating some of these out-of-control giants.
So apparently they use Bluetooth to establish the connection and WiFi for the data transfer. This sounds a lot like the "Alternative MAC/PHY" feature which was added in Bluetooth 3.0 and then removed in Bluetooth 5.3 [1] due to low uptake.
Why didn't the standard Bluetooth way of doing this gain any traction? What was wrong with it?
The DMA also forces them to have interoperable end-to-end encrypted group video call support in like 5 years or something insane. No idea how that's supposed to happen!
The problem isn't E2E encrypted group video calls. FaceTime supports that. The issue is interoperability with E2E encryption.
If Apple says sure, implement this FaceTime spec. Facebook does the same thing, go ahead and implement Messenger video chat.
Now you have the Android NewVideoChat app which supports its own protocol, Facebook's and Apple's. A user with NewVideoChat tries to invite a NewVideoChat user, an Apple user and a Facebook user to a video chat.
Except Facebook Messenger's app doesn't support Apple's Facetime app doesn't support Facebook Messenger, so you run into some issues. Something needs to dupe the stream out to all three services which use radically different payloads and encryption methods - and they have to do it without breaking end-to-end encryption. Do it at the client-side and the Android app users will need to dupe their own streams three times and at least one user will need to relay the other two other streams, with all the bandwidth and latency issues that entails. Do it on the server side and you somehow need to translate between protocols (and possibly codecs!) without decrypting them.
And if your video group chat supports private messaging between a subset of participants, you can end up in a situation where a Facebook user wants to send something to a Facetime user without the NewVideoChat user seeing it.. which is a bit of a problem.
> If I had to guess why neither of Google’s Quick Share posts mentions Wi-Fi interoperability standards or the DMA, it may be because Google has been complaining about various aspects of the law and its enforcement since before it was even passed
This is telling a lot about US companies complaining about EU laws.
Rally can't trust Apple making any standard. They always want to make more money than it is worth, and create demands which eventually causes monopoly and waste.
Great! Apple is happy to use the regular Wifi standard, regular Bluetooth standard, USB standard (which they were "planning to anyway" even tho it perfectly lined up with being forced to). They support media standards like mp4, jpeg, png etc.
ALL companies should be beholden to common standards of interoperability. It infuriates me that I can plug my Android phone into Windows and it reads it just fine but that plugging it into my Mac does nothing because a bunch of executives are circle jerking each other; this stuff isn't good for US, the consumers.
How can we have that cool future where we swipe a media file over towards a person in AR and have it automatically sent to them when we're allowing companies to use the standards they like and dodge ones they don't so that they can create a "platfoooorm" hurr de durr. The "platform" is the entire fucking ecosystem of devices out there.
I've ditched AirDrop for LocalSend, which is universally cross-platform (iOS, macOS, Linux, Android) and works very well. It's not a complete substitute, it doesn't work in the case of completely casual sharing between devices that are not connected to a shared WiFi network, however.
Imagine the worldly gains of allowing such an amazing technology to permeate society. Ah, well, that's against the interests of the shareholders. It's better to lock shit down and earn a dollar than precipitate betterment for human kind. The dollar! All hail!
This is honestly one of those tiny things that make it really hard to even consider looking outside of the Apple ecosystem. I'm beginning to divest from apple, and this is a big help.
Next up please do streaming. Chromecast seems so locked down so take AirPlay and make it a standard.
Then instead of just opening up NFC, make Google and Apple Wallet support plugins, so users can have one interface with all their cards but not tied to one payment system.
>Chromecast seems so locked down so take AirPlay and make it a standard
Weird thing to say given that AirPlay is also locked down as well...they're both the same. But I agree with the overall sentiment; a common wireless streaming standard would be amazing. It would mean I can use more devices to throw Samsung DEX at.
Hell, if all monitors/TVs/displays came with basic "receive a standard stream from wifi" support that would be so great for consumers, reduces friction so much.
Look, I don't like some of the things the EU is doing and I think Apple should consider (along with other tech companies) selling products tailed to the EU, Asia and rest of the world. In the long-run, it might be cheaper.
That said, they are setting a good example of legislating for tech. We should be doing a lot of that here in the US. I don't need a bulletproof, ultra-secure, end-to-end encrypted, formally verified phone (although that would be nice). As a boring regular person, I want to not have to need all of that because my government will imprison people that violate my rights. But more on-topic, the FTC (EDIT: FCC) exists to regulate among other things, wireless comms, so this would be something they should be legislating.
Although, putting on my tech hat, I need to re-state that I disagree with this move. I want tech companies to experiment and use faster, more secure, more reliable comms tech without having to worry about compatibility. It is in my interest as a consumer.
Lightning was a superior technology to USB-C, we don't have it now because the EU forced apple's hands. I don't want to lose out on good tech. The EU should have instead forced everyone else to use lightning if they want things simpler.
Why is the EU intent on having inferior tech, inferior capability, inferior pay, inferior innovation-friendly environment. They have the power to demand better things and provide them for their people. The compromise isn't needed. At the risk of offending the HN crowd, I'll even say that the EU shouldn't support open-source things unless they are actually the superior tech. You can't eat or pay your bills with ideals. If commercial/properietary tech is better for europeans, that is what the EU should focus on.
I will drive European or Japanese cars that are better than American cars, I don't mind doing the same with tech, except with Europe that's getting more and more rare. What happened to Nokia and Ericsson. NL has ASML, wouldn't it be nice if we had a TSMC competitor in Europe as well? I don't want to keep going on, but I hope my point is clear.
Competition is good, Android shouldn't need to support AirDrop, it should come up with a better alternative and leave iPhone users wondering why Android's solution is faster and works at greater distances. Same with iMessage compatibility.
Instead competition, the EU is wanting forced mediocrity. They are within their rights for sure, but it isn't the best thing to do.
I only wish they did the same thing with electrical outlets and forced the world to use one mediocre standard :)
> it should come up with a better alternative and leave iPhone users wondering why Android's solution is faster and works at greater distances. Same with iMessage compatibility.
Okay, so, why don't we see competition in places where it matters, like Airdrop, iMessage and the App Store?
The answer seems to be pretty simple, to me; Apple considers themselves above competition. It doesn't matter if a superior system exists, they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone. It's a lose/lose situation between consumers and the economy, who neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
We do see competition there, iMessage is superior, so many android apps try to emulate it. thunderbolt was around before USB 4, lightning was before USB-C, the Apple appstore is still a model of better quality/security. You can see google trying to emulate that and requiring devs to id themselves (competition isn't always pleasant). Why would you spend making something better, if it doesn't give your company a competitive edge? If you're forced to help your competition have the same capability, where is the ROI?
> Apple considers themselves above competition
In literally every market apple is in, they have intense competition!?
> they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone
Ugh.. yeah.. shouldn't they be allowed to sell things that they believe will sell well? I mean on one hand people complain about cheap devices engineered with planned obsolescence, and then you complain about what.. better quality? If they believe it is a superior system, then certain, I want that as a consumer. Why don't you? And I also thing being able to buy a different phone is great, that means no monopolies, that's what we all want right?
> neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
I am getting a superior hardware and software for apple. What his happening now is, for no amount of money I could possibly earn can I get a good quality product, I have to settle with EU's forced mediocrity even though I don't live in the EU. People who can't afford apple products have alternatives, but that isn't enough for you, you want everyone to get participation trophies? that's what it sounds like, i could be wrong, it sounds like you don't want to feel envious of people who get superior products? Even though there are many android phones more expensive than iPhones, so it isn't even a question of affordability. it's just forced mediocrity. With no upsides to anyone other than people who feel great about "america bad" "middle finger to apple".
>Okay, so, why don't we see competition in places where it matters, like Airdrop, iMessage and the App Store?
Honestly, because Apple has always had the major advantage of being one company, whereas and Android market is fragments, with both prod and cons. That Samsung competes decently with Apple because they've created kind of their own ecosystem shows exactly why it is important to regular interoperability and prevent walled garden behaviours.
Otherwise we'll end up with just Apple/Samsung. Or perhaps even just Apple...which I know the cult will argue would be a great thing.
It's the same everywhere; countries with a 2 party political system always experience huge problems because of it.
So what is it? Comanagement between EU representatives and Apple employees? It looks like the German model where unions co-manage the companies.
On the paper it looks great, but the problem is the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens. It’s great for my Apple products, but I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
> Comanagement between EU representatives and Apple employees?
Whatever gave you this impression? That’s not what the story is saying at all.
> the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens
It is not supposed to. The EU is a group of states, not citizens. If you want your voice to really count, lobby your national government, which has more say in the councils of ministers or the council of Europe than the MEPs have.
> I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
How big is that "entire lavish class"? Just to know how upset I need to be. Also, which law was "written by lobbies"?
People keep mentioning Wi-Fi Aware with this, but so far haven't seen anyone actually prove that this is the case.
Apple undoubtedly added Wi-Fi Aware support to iOS https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware, but its not clear whether iOS actually supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware. Apple clearly hasn't completely dropped AWDL for AirDrop, because you can still AirDrop from iOS 26 to earlier devices.
Note that the Ars Technica article never directly makes the claim that Apple supports Airdrop over Wi-Fi Aware. The title is two independent statements - "The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop" - that's true.
> Google doesn’t mention it in either Quick Share post, but if you’re wondering why it’s suddenly possible for Quick Share to work with AirDrop, it can almost certainly be credited to European Union regulations imposed under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Again, they're just theorising. They never directly make the claim. Would love on Hacker News for someone to do some Hacking and actually figure it out for real!
I'm fairly sure the article is wrong.
For example, someone found strings in Google's implementation that mentioned AWDL: https://social.treehouse.systems/@nicolas17/1155847323390351...
Also people have mentioned having success Airdropping to macOS devices, which are not listed as being supported on the Wi-Fi Aware page.
In 2020 Google's Project Zero found a zero-click remote RCE in Apple's AWDL implementation. So at least some folks at Google are fully equipped to build a reverse engineered implementation. Discussion on that awhile back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270184
Yeah, people have confirmed it works with iOS 15, so it seems more likely that Google implemented AWDL.
> macOS devices, which are not listed as being supported on the Wi-Fi Aware page.
Not listed, but shipped with some Wifi Aware library
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DeviceToDeviceManager.framework/Plugins/WiFiAwareD2DPlugin.bundle
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Both can still be true. The interop may be motivated by the EU regulator's intention so and to stave off further regulation.
It’s funny how we’re all trying to piece together the stack from bits and obscure clues. Would be so cool if Apple and Google finally embrace their role as “essential public infrastructure” and release their specs, interoperate, etc.. so one doesn’t end up trapped one way or another when picking a personal device.
> "essential public infrastructure"
If people wanted these devices and services to be public infrastructure, they should be developed and maintained using public funds.
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It's frustrating how much people want this to be an EU win they'll fabricate evidence. The same happened with RCS in iOS, everybody jumped in to credit it to the EU, when you can find the document spelling out how RCS is a requirement for China.
Don't forget that Apple is feeling sore and playing the petulant child in their PR regarding EU regulations, especially regarding the digital markets act. They don't want to appear to give in the EU, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Apple doesn't want to admit that the EU forced them.
There is very little literature about Chinese requirements rolled out
and when there is, its talked about as American tech companies bowing to an authoritarian regime as opposed to fighting a burgeoning market force acting on behalf of consumers and the American tech companies losing that fight
the latter is how the EU work is syndicated
in between is that there likely is no fight with Chinese regulators alongside an unwillingness to alter access to that market
I don't care which sovereign state or union forces the trillion dollar tech giant to behave. I'm just glad it happened. And I applaud China if this was their victory.
I want it to happen with a thousand times more intensity for Apple and Google.
We should own these devices. We shouldn't be subsistence farmers on the most important device category in the world.
They need to be opened up to competition, standards, right to repair, privacy, web app installs, browser choice, messaging, etc. etc.
They shouldn't be strong arming tiny developers or the entire automotive industry. It's vastly unfair. And this strip mining impacts us as consumers.
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Imo kinda same about usb-c on iphone. The writing was on the wall that they were transitioning devices away from lightning to usb-c, a standard they too had their hands in. Especially so when wanting to position the pro model iphones as professional cameras with external storage capable of doing decent levels of prores to boot, they werent about to make lightning ssds to do the job.
The only thing perhaps expedited was the push to have it on base model iphones sooner.
Same with usb-c when Apple was one of the main drivers of usb-c adoption.
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If the EU forced Apple to adopt Wi-Fi Aware then Apple would just fence it to EU users.
The attempt of trying to paint this as a powerplay by the EU is tenuous:
- Apple, along with Microsoft and Intel are founding members of the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose objective was to introduce a standard of interoperability through Wi-Fi Aware.1
- This work commenced long before the EU showed any interest in regulating tech.
- Apple have a pretty solid history of fencing EU-mandated changes to EU devices.
- Microsoft's Windows, also deemed by the EU as a "gatekeeper" hasn't deployed Wi-Fi Aware in Windows. With no public plans to do so.2
1. https://www.washingtoninformer.com/wi-fi-aware-aims-to-conne...
2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2284386/...
Apple _did_ adopt and support Wi-Fi Aware as a protocol iOS supports. It just doesn’t use it for AirDrop.
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Apple usually gatekeeps their EU required features with a strong region lock.
If Airdrop was changed to use Wifi-Aware due to EU regulation it very likely wouldn't be enabled worldwide.
Oh, look what "over-regulation" does, forcing companies to comply to standards so they can't vendor lock-in their users (this happened with the iphone charging port too, from the apple specific port to usb-c).
Guess this type of consumer-benefic changes wouldn't happen in the land of "freedom".
I think the land of “freedom” knows that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
It's likely that without laws such as the DMCA, there would already be easier, legally legitimate ways to circumvent Apples technology preventing interoperability. So as usual the new regulations try to cancel out the problems caused by the previous regulation, while having their own side effects that require future regulation to cancel out, ad infinitum.
Why would that be likely
That’s unlikely.
A positive effect from regulation does not rebut the general argument against government regulation of industry.
The problem with regulation isn’t that there are never any positive effects, of course there are.
The problem is it’s impossible to reliably avoid adding substantial friction to life via overly broad regulation that is not applicable but has to be followed anyway, or outdated but still-in-effect regulation that is not applicable but has to be followed anyway, at least.
If this only bothered huge companies then I would say cost of doing business, who cares, etc, but it actually affects things like how cities and towns are designed, how expensive housing is, how expensive medical treatment is, etc.
It's unclear exactly what you're arguing, but I think if you are arguing that, because of the unavoidable substantial friction caused by regulation, we shouldn't have any regulation of industry at all... I think it's trivial to find examples where banning all regulation of industry would make the world a much, much worse place. Much worse than the friction.
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Even though overly broad regulation is a risk, I don't believe little/no regulation is an option either. I don't think the US's consumer protection mechanisms work, and I'm happy to accept the downsides of the EU's systems that come with the upsides of regulation.
I really wish microeconomics was a high-school or secondary school required course. It's one of the most applicable to life and voters well-studied disciplines that describes the effects of certain actions towards or away from a competitive market, market elasticity and barriers to entry, explains positive and negative externalities of government action, and how those actions affect consumer pricing and supply (a lot of the topics here and below). Without studying this topic we view words with different underlying assumptions or definitions and it's a lot more effort / time / replies to not talk around each other. It's like two people who only use Windows for Instagram trying to argue about why Apt requiring Rust is good or bad. I'm not weighing in for or against the topic in this thread or its replies, just a plug to study Microeconomics if this stuff interests you!
I mean, housing and medical treatment are more expensive in the US because the market is unregulated and so the capital exploits the poor who can't do otherwise for those basic needs.
You defeated your own argument ? Thanks !
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So they forced Apple to drop an Apple proprietary thing in favor of… a Wi-Fi standard Apple helped develop specifically to replace their proprietary thing.
Not quite as strong as the headline makes the case sound.
Apple also helped develop USB C more than a decade ago, they still had to be forced to actually use it in their phones. There is no contradiction here
Apple said from the day that they made lightning cables that it would be supported for 10 years. They literally contractually guaranteed that to third party manufacturers in exchange for them creating a massive availability of cables for Apple users.
The EU “forced them” to switch to the standard they helped develop (USB C) on the 11th year after developing lighting. I’m sure it was all the EUs doing.
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Apple also helped develop ARM, but I believe nobody likes to talk about that.
I wonder when the Europe is going to open up European companies like ASML, who are pretty much the de facto monopolies in their field. I believe the Nexperia incident showed that there's also a lot of political and national reasons behind such decisions, not just creating open and fair markets.
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That did turn a huge number of chargers and accessories into e-waste though...
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Users all got to complain that the EU are the meanies responsible for their old wires and chargers and accessory no longer being compatible, but it seems infinitely more likely that Apple was going to adopt USB-C on largely the same schedule even if the EU didn't intercede.
To be clear, Apple had already moved their laptops and computers to USB-C -- long in advance of almost any one else -- and had moved their iPad Pros and Air to USB-C, building out the accessory set supporting the same, years before the EU decree. Pretty convenient when they get to blame the EU for their smartphones making the utterly inevitable move.
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Apple used USB-C on the iPhone 15 and 16 without being forced to do so. If Apple was indeed forced to use USB-C they would have postponed it to the 17.
Do you also think Apple was forced to use USB-C on the iPad and MacBook?
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Apple was forced to upstream the standard because the writing was on the wall so may as well preempt it.
It’d also a benefit for Apple, since once upstreamed it shares the maintenance burden across all participants.
It is also worth noting that Android wasn’t using the standard as well. If they had, this would have been day 0 interoperability for Android phones. Instead, it is a single phone model released a couple months after iOS 26.
I feel like your take is what an Apple PR person might say in order to downplay Apple's defeat.
Hah, right? Everyone understands that Apple wouldn't have done anything by themselves if it wasn't for the DMA.
The whole selling point of Apple was that as long as you're inside the ecosystem, you'll get the smoothest experience. Well, now the law says that devices, apps and products from third parties should be able to be used on an iPhone as seamlessly as Apple's own products, of course they wouldn't have given that up willingly.
And that's how regulations work. The very companies targeted by regulations often design and push for them. By doing so they gain a competitive advantage, price out smaller rivals, and move closer to becoming a monopoly. Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor, talks about this in his book Competitive Strategy.
The moat gets mighty large when the government regulators start making it bigger. That's one of the advantages that the Mag 7 has now - it's not just the scale but it's also the compliance burden for new entrants.
Well they forced a standard that anybody can use to support wirelessly sending files to nearby devices. That's a huge chain and taking a few bricks out of the garden wall.
I literally do not care about the wanky culty Android this Apple that stuff. I just want to plug my phone into my Mac and have it be able to read it, regardless of what phone that is. When someone needs to send me a document, I don't want them to have to change how they send it based on what device I have. Regulation and enforcing common interoperability standards is good for consumers; I don't care whose implementation wins out, just that all my devices support it.
The headline is 100% correct.
It is literally correct. My point was I think it implies the EU had to force a totally belligerent Apple (which we’ve certainly seen) instead of Apple already working on this and EU perhaps speeding the timeline a little.
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The EU: Sacrificing constituents' privacy rights with one hand, while courageously fighting for the sacred right to AirDrop with the other.
If a law forced Apple to do good for everyone, not just a small group of people, isn't that a good thing? It wasn't exactly that AirDrop got legislated, but thanks to the DMA, AirDrop (and other things) are within scope and they now have to make things more seamless for everyone. Win-win no?
Don't worry, the United States is always eager to prove that you can neglect both consumer rights and user privacy at the same time.
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The national governments are to blame, not the EU.
I wonder if it's related to Apple's change from AWDL to Wi-Fi Aware, but AirDrop seems much more reliable on iOS 26. I can send to multiple people at once and they often all succeed, but most importantly, if one transfer fails or is cancelled, I can retry and it works. In older versions of iOS, a failed transfer seemed to block all future attempts until the phone was restarted.
Is there any proof that this change actually happened?
Have you tried the NFC-bumping the tops of the iPhones together yet? So far I’ve had superb success rate on iOS18.
the weird one for me is that if I hit share, and then hit the airdrop target, it doesn't work, but if go into airdrop and then select the same target, then works. Apple, fix your shit, yo.
Yep seen this before too.
Regulators never manage to design good products, but they’re weirdly good at accidentally clearing technical roadblocks that incumbents had no incentive to touch.
This is what "interoperability" actually looks like in practice: nobody forces Apple to ship AirDrop-for-Android, they just force them off a proprietary stack and onto a public standard, and suddenly Google can meet them on neutral ground. The EU didn’t create a feature, it removed Apple’s ability to say "we technically can’t."
Also notice the asymmetry: once both sides sit on Wi-Fi Aware, Apple gets basically nothing by embracing Quick Share, but Google and users get a ton from being able to talk to AirDrop. So the market on its own would never converge on this, because the only player who could unlock the value had the least reason to. You need a regulator to make the defection from proprietary to standard mandatory, then "open" just looks like someone finally flipping a bit that was always there.
Google most likely reimplemented AWDL, and the article is wrong. Sure the EU's actions will affect the optics, but Apple will be in the clear if they decide to nuke this.
If that is true it now is much harder for Apple to nuke this though. Because all eyes would be on them.
If you want to airdrop android users just buy an android mate
Pretty sure this was debunked: https://androiddev.social/@MishaalRahman/115593737977641823
An additional benefit is that the Wi-Fi standard also means that the weird account requirements on Google's Nearby Share can be avoided by independent implementations (i.e. on Windows or Linux or maybe rooted Android, iOS and macOS already have it of course).
"Contacts only mode" will always be a challenge, but at least the "I just want to share a file without Google watching me" use case is now resolved by Google implementing a standard that doesn't involve them.
Unfortunately, this is Pixel 10 exclusive for now, for some reason. I expect Samsung to pick this up eventually as well, but I'm not sure if Google will be able to backport this tech through Google Play Services the way they did with Nearby Share on older phones.
Qualcomm has confirmed it's coming to Snapdragon phones soon[0], which maybe hints that it's dependent on the SoC drivers? Samsung uses a mix of Snapdragon and their own Exynos, but I can't see them not releasing it to their Snapdragon phones when others do, and then they pretty much have to release it to their Exynos phones too.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-confirms-Quick-Share-...
An implementation of AWDL on Linux requires a Wi-Fi card that supports "active monitor mode with frame injection". [1] I looked into using it with an Intel Wi-Fi card I had and it appeared mine wasn't supported. I'm guessing the situation is similar on Android in terms of SoC support.
[1]: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl?tab=readme-ov-file#require...
Have you confirmed that the new feature works without an account or is that speculation?
The account requirement for nearby share never made sense yet they still did it the way...
The account requirement for nearby share is, as I understand it, to enable "contacts only" mode, which is how you prevent people from receiving random dickpics the second they try out the protocol and permanently turn the feature off afterwards. I think NS also has some kind of cloud transfer backup connection in case local transfers don't work (using Samsung's cloud), but I'm not 100% sure if that's related.
The account requirement can already be avoided using existing implementations of standard QuickShare (i.e. https://henriqueclaranhan.github.io/rquickshare/) but those are limited to devices sharing the same WiFi connection. However, as there is no contact sharing between iOS and Android, interoperability basically forces Google to pick between "Google account optional" and "doesn't work with iOS".
The more tragic thing is that the US government really does not care about consumers in general - otherwise they would have ensured standards even for the big megacorporations to adhere to.
And the consequences? The World's favourite technology is designed by Americans in America by America-headquarted companies. And then the rest of the world buys it and loves it.
The UK has ARM. The Netherlands has ASML. But those are B2B suppliers. Europe, with it's regulatory overreach, has very few consumer technology companies of any consequence
Nothing could support this more than eliminating the department that was setup to financially protect consumers.
We were staring.
People voted against it. Bigly.
I'll be happy when Airdrop works reliably on Apple equipment.
It can't reliably work between two adjacent rooms in my home without arm-waving.
A hundred or thousand mile trip through iCloud works tons better.
Yes same, you bump, you put iPhones on to op each other, you enable "findable by other". And still you may be messing around for minutes. Then a larger transfer starts... But fails half way for 6 times.
It's the best way (if it works!) to transfer full quality live images quickly, but otherwise I'd be happier just using Signal.
It depends on Bluetooth to establish the connection so if you are out of Bluetooth range it won't work.
It's within range because it works, but requires some twisting and arm waving to get it to work from one room to the next, no Faraday shields in the home.
Then again, I transferred 4 iPhone photos to the imac 2 feet away and it failed. Worked on the next try. It's flakey as hell, and this is a 3rd generation iPhone SE and M2 mac mini. Not exactly old. I really hate bluetooth.
I got an old Time Capsule at the thrift store, that checked out but I haven't made use of it. It might be time. FWIW, I got PhotoSync app (not free) long ago so as to share photos with "everything" and it runs in the background on the mac, but I stupidly hold to the notion that whatever comes with the operating system otta work.
can the EU pass a law forcing apple to make AirDrop work between two ios devices?
I'm libertarian, but I have to say watching the EU torment Apple has been delightful and one of the stronger arguments for muscular regulatory action.
The USB-C thing just made everything better. It cost Apple basically nothing---maybe a few million/year of profit, which for a company that's worth $3 trillion is nothing, and it made my and many other people's lives quite a bit more convenient.
Same with this Airdrop thing, and same with RCS (although there's some reporting that RCS had more to do with China than the EU).
Eventually, someone is going to break open iMessage, and poor Apple will actually have to compete again for customers. Maybe they'll innovate something more interesting than Airpods Ultra Mega Pro Max or a thinner phone.
Apple made major contributions to USB-C and adopted it a decade ago in their MacBooks. They were committed to lightning for 10 years starting in 2012-ish, so usb-c was likely inevitable in iOS devices.
However I would preferred a backwards compatibility lightning 2.0 upgrade. Cleaning a usb-c port is a huge pain and they are more prone to pocket lint clogging than lightning.
While I really like the convenience of not having multiple different cables to charge my devices when travelling, I agree with you on cleaning the usb-c port. In that respect, the lightning design was a lot more elegant and made more sense for a pocketable device.
Plastic dental picks work great for cleaning USB-C ports.
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Careful on what you wish for. The same regulatory action can be (is) being used for Chat Control (that dropped off the main page for some reason). Ultimately neither power center acts for the general interest.
> The USB-C thing just made everything better. It cost Apple basically nothing
It made all the iPhone docks/speakers/etc. obsolete. The last time that happened, when Apple swapped the old 30 pin connector for lightning, it pissed off a fair number of customers.
This time they could blame the EU which was likely a huge plus.
iPhone docks and speakers were already obsolete. They had a moment during the 30-pin era, but its been long since Bluetooth, Carplay took over in any mainstream use.
iMessage escaped DMA because it has marginal market share anywhere outside the US. WhatsApp is the dominant messaging platform and is opening up:
https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...
The usb C to hdmi adapter is 100x less reliable than the lightning to hdmi adapter (having talked to many that used both).
Not sure why that is, but something to ponder.
The iPad Pro got USB-C in 2018, well before the EU legislation. It seems inevitable the iPhone would have got it even without the EU getting involved.
From reading this comment it doesn’t sound like you’re a libertarian at all.
You're a libertarian but regulatory intervention made everything about the market better and a better world for everyone involved with a relatively small change that was being stubbornly refused by a company for a small marginal benefit to themselves?
We call them "LINO"s.
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Sure, because I think that, ultimately excessive regulation stifles innovation. I mean, heck, the EU is looking to effectively dismantle GDPR because they're worried that it's going to cause them to miss out on the AI boom.
My point was just that Apple is such an outrageously bad actor (and the USB-C and Airdrop rules so beneficial) that these rules were getting even a very pro-market person like me to at least be open to the idea of regulating some of these out-of-control giants.
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So apparently they use Bluetooth to establish the connection and WiFi for the data transfer. This sounds a lot like the "Alternative MAC/PHY" feature which was added in Bluetooth 3.0 and then removed in Bluetooth 5.3 [1] due to low uptake.
Why didn't the standard Bluetooth way of doing this gain any traction? What was wrong with it?
[1] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Bluetoo...
Has already been possible for a while: https://github.com/aylishime/WarpShare
The trick is that it doesn’t use AWDL: macOS (but not iOS) also supports AirDrop via local network, although it’s not enabled by default: https://github.com/vinint/MoKee-WarpShare/issues/3#issuecomm...
The DMA also forces them to have interoperable end-to-end encrypted group video call support in like 5 years or something insane. No idea how that's supposed to happen!
Telegram implemented such feature.
https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end/group-calls
The problem isn't E2E encrypted group video calls. FaceTime supports that. The issue is interoperability with E2E encryption.
If Apple says sure, implement this FaceTime spec. Facebook does the same thing, go ahead and implement Messenger video chat.
Now you have the Android NewVideoChat app which supports its own protocol, Facebook's and Apple's. A user with NewVideoChat tries to invite a NewVideoChat user, an Apple user and a Facebook user to a video chat.
Except Facebook Messenger's app doesn't support Apple's Facetime app doesn't support Facebook Messenger, so you run into some issues. Something needs to dupe the stream out to all three services which use radically different payloads and encryption methods - and they have to do it without breaking end-to-end encryption. Do it at the client-side and the Android app users will need to dupe their own streams three times and at least one user will need to relay the other two other streams, with all the bandwidth and latency issues that entails. Do it on the server side and you somehow need to translate between protocols (and possibly codecs!) without decrypting them.
And if your video group chat supports private messaging between a subset of participants, you can end up in a situation where a Facebook user wants to send something to a Facetime user without the NewVideoChat user seeing it.. which is a bit of a problem.
> If I had to guess why neither of Google’s Quick Share posts mentions Wi-Fi interoperability standards or the DMA, it may be because Google has been complaining about various aspects of the law and its enforcement since before it was even passed
This is telling a lot about US companies complaining about EU laws.
Rally can't trust Apple making any standard. They always want to make more money than it is worth, and create demands which eventually causes monopoly and waste.
Discussion from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994854
Great! Apple is happy to use the regular Wifi standard, regular Bluetooth standard, USB standard (which they were "planning to anyway" even tho it perfectly lined up with being forced to). They support media standards like mp4, jpeg, png etc.
ALL companies should be beholden to common standards of interoperability. It infuriates me that I can plug my Android phone into Windows and it reads it just fine but that plugging it into my Mac does nothing because a bunch of executives are circle jerking each other; this stuff isn't good for US, the consumers.
How can we have that cool future where we swipe a media file over towards a person in AR and have it automatically sent to them when we're allowing companies to use the standards they like and dodge ones they don't so that they can create a "platfoooorm" hurr de durr. The "platform" is the entire fucking ecosystem of devices out there.
This is false. Google just reverse-engineered it.
I've ditched AirDrop for LocalSend, which is universally cross-platform (iOS, macOS, Linux, Android) and works very well. It's not a complete substitute, it doesn't work in the case of completely casual sharing between devices that are not connected to a shared WiFi network, however.
I did not know that LocalSend had been ported to iOS and MacOS.
I had previously used the built-in webserver for transfers from Android to Apple.
I do have much greater luck with LocalSend transfers when I tether them to my own WiFi prior to transfer.
Yes. The only caveat is that since LocalSend isn't blessed by Apple, it isn't automatically invoked and you have to start it manually to receive.
the real kick to the teeth for apple is when they will be forced to adopt different browser engines across all markets.
btw safari is a fine browser but on iOS it seems crippled a bit.
we are already getting there with support for web-gpu.
>btw safari is a fine browser but on iOS it seems crippled a bit.
it's not a fine browser if laymen have to update the OS just to get a new browser update.
sadly, I agree with your take.
Will this help or hinder the CCP’s strong arming of Apple to hinder airdrop?
Perhaps there is another article with a title something like
"Evidence that self-regulation works: Apple, Google adopt new WiFi standards"
Imagine the worldly gains of allowing such an amazing technology to permeate society. Ah, well, that's against the interests of the shareholders. It's better to lock shit down and earn a dollar than precipitate betterment for human kind. The dollar! All hail!
This is honestly one of those tiny things that make it really hard to even consider looking outside of the Apple ecosystem. I'm beginning to divest from apple, and this is a big help.
Next up please do streaming. Chromecast seems so locked down so take AirPlay and make it a standard.
Then instead of just opening up NFC, make Google and Apple Wallet support plugins, so users can have one interface with all their cards but not tied to one payment system.
>Chromecast seems so locked down so take AirPlay and make it a standard
Weird thing to say given that AirPlay is also locked down as well...they're both the same. But I agree with the overall sentiment; a common wireless streaming standard would be amazing. It would mean I can use more devices to throw Samsung DEX at.
Hell, if all monitors/TVs/displays came with basic "receive a standard stream from wifi" support that would be so great for consumers, reduces friction so much.
Airdrop support is a really weak reason to switch to Android. Just sayin’
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994854
[dupe]
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994854
The better dupe (linked in TFA) - from March:
> Cross-Platform P2P Wi-Fi: How the EU Killed AWDL
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43505022
[dupe] of your own comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062963
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Is the eu or apple the toddler here?
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Look, I don't like some of the things the EU is doing and I think Apple should consider (along with other tech companies) selling products tailed to the EU, Asia and rest of the world. In the long-run, it might be cheaper.
That said, they are setting a good example of legislating for tech. We should be doing a lot of that here in the US. I don't need a bulletproof, ultra-secure, end-to-end encrypted, formally verified phone (although that would be nice). As a boring regular person, I want to not have to need all of that because my government will imprison people that violate my rights. But more on-topic, the FTC (EDIT: FCC) exists to regulate among other things, wireless comms, so this would be something they should be legislating.
Although, putting on my tech hat, I need to re-state that I disagree with this move. I want tech companies to experiment and use faster, more secure, more reliable comms tech without having to worry about compatibility. It is in my interest as a consumer.
Lightning was a superior technology to USB-C, we don't have it now because the EU forced apple's hands. I don't want to lose out on good tech. The EU should have instead forced everyone else to use lightning if they want things simpler.
Why is the EU intent on having inferior tech, inferior capability, inferior pay, inferior innovation-friendly environment. They have the power to demand better things and provide them for their people. The compromise isn't needed. At the risk of offending the HN crowd, I'll even say that the EU shouldn't support open-source things unless they are actually the superior tech. You can't eat or pay your bills with ideals. If commercial/properietary tech is better for europeans, that is what the EU should focus on.
I will drive European or Japanese cars that are better than American cars, I don't mind doing the same with tech, except with Europe that's getting more and more rare. What happened to Nokia and Ericsson. NL has ASML, wouldn't it be nice if we had a TSMC competitor in Europe as well? I don't want to keep going on, but I hope my point is clear.
Competition is good, Android shouldn't need to support AirDrop, it should come up with a better alternative and leave iPhone users wondering why Android's solution is faster and works at greater distances. Same with iMessage compatibility.
Instead competition, the EU is wanting forced mediocrity. They are within their rights for sure, but it isn't the best thing to do.
I only wish they did the same thing with electrical outlets and forced the world to use one mediocre standard :)
> it should come up with a better alternative and leave iPhone users wondering why Android's solution is faster and works at greater distances. Same with iMessage compatibility.
Okay, so, why don't we see competition in places where it matters, like Airdrop, iMessage and the App Store?
The answer seems to be pretty simple, to me; Apple considers themselves above competition. It doesn't matter if a superior system exists, they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone. It's a lose/lose situation between consumers and the economy, who neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
We do see competition there, iMessage is superior, so many android apps try to emulate it. thunderbolt was around before USB 4, lightning was before USB-C, the Apple appstore is still a model of better quality/security. You can see google trying to emulate that and requiring devs to id themselves (competition isn't always pleasant). Why would you spend making something better, if it doesn't give your company a competitive edge? If you're forced to help your competition have the same capability, where is the ROI?
> Apple considers themselves above competition
In literally every market apple is in, they have intense competition!?
> they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone
Ugh.. yeah.. shouldn't they be allowed to sell things that they believe will sell well? I mean on one hand people complain about cheap devices engineered with planned obsolescence, and then you complain about what.. better quality? If they believe it is a superior system, then certain, I want that as a consumer. Why don't you? And I also thing being able to buy a different phone is great, that means no monopolies, that's what we all want right?
> neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
I am getting a superior hardware and software for apple. What his happening now is, for no amount of money I could possibly earn can I get a good quality product, I have to settle with EU's forced mediocrity even though I don't live in the EU. People who can't afford apple products have alternatives, but that isn't enough for you, you want everyone to get participation trophies? that's what it sounds like, i could be wrong, it sounds like you don't want to feel envious of people who get superior products? Even though there are many android phones more expensive than iPhones, so it isn't even a question of affordability. it's just forced mediocrity. With no upsides to anyone other than people who feel great about "america bad" "middle finger to apple".
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>Okay, so, why don't we see competition in places where it matters, like Airdrop, iMessage and the App Store?
Honestly, because Apple has always had the major advantage of being one company, whereas and Android market is fragments, with both prod and cons. That Samsung competes decently with Apple because they've created kind of their own ecosystem shows exactly why it is important to regular interoperability and prevent walled garden behaviours.
Otherwise we'll end up with just Apple/Samsung. Or perhaps even just Apple...which I know the cult will argue would be a great thing.
It's the same everywhere; countries with a 2 party political system always experience huge problems because of it.
> the FTC exists to regulate among other things, wireless comms
FCC purview?
oops, I meant FCC, edited it.
So what is it? Comanagement between EU representatives and Apple employees? It looks like the German model where unions co-manage the companies.
On the paper it looks great, but the problem is the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens. It’s great for my Apple products, but I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
> Comanagement between EU representatives and Apple employees?
Whatever gave you this impression? That’s not what the story is saying at all.
> the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens
It is not supposed to. The EU is a group of states, not citizens. If you want your voice to really count, lobby your national government, which has more say in the councils of ministers or the council of Europe than the MEPs have.
> I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
How big is that "entire lavish class"? Just to know how upset I need to be. Also, which law was "written by lobbies"?
> the problem is the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens.
Yes, EU citizens probably absolutely love not being able to conveniently share files between Android and iOS.
> I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
What lobbies, in this particular case? Google? Samsung?