6 ms·

I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.

by bduerst 11y ago

johansch 11y ago
They still haven't included it...
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Well it's there for apple things like Apple Pay. There's no real incentive for them to open it up to developers unless they're controlling the space. i.e. for Apple Pay it's nice, or say to unlock your car, or unlock your home's door with Home Kit, but random NFC thingies? They're not really interested.
giovannibajo1 11y ago
That's because they are not a OEM that throws hardware together trying to differentiate, no matter what the software using it will be like. Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type, and that makes them make money but without charging more neither the users neither the merchant, and is interoperable with existing credit cards and banks (including the per-bank customized provisioning process). Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.
- sigmar 11y ago
  >Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type... What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.
  - ptomato 11y ago
    TrustZone/"Secure Enclave" as apple is calling it.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    They were _possible_ in 2012 but getting everyone on board is difficult. Google included NFC on the Nexus S in 2010. The Nexus S was an atrocious piece of junk compared to its contemporary, the iPhone 4. NFC did nothing to make using the Nexus S more pleasurable. Android beam? Nobody used that. Google did not release the NFC-capable Wallet app until 2011, and at that time the integration between the app, the phone (still the Nexus S) and the payment terminals was ghastly. Nobody used it because it was much slower than paying by any other way and half the time it didn't work. The 2011 Galaxy Nexus didn't make things any better. The NFC antenna was attached to the flexible battery cover and the spring-loaded contacts didn't really work. Google was still pushing Wallet but the merchants didn't care because they weren't getting a better price on transaction clearance and close to nobody had the hardware. NFC was a complete basket case, and still remains that way except for Apple.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      What you just described is exactly how Apple killed NFC adoption. The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful. June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up steam, but Apple elected to try to build their own walled-garden payments system using Passbook and bar codes.
      - etchalon 11y ago
        What are you talking about? Passbook was never a payment system, it just had gift cards. Passbook isn't a payment system NOW. Apple Pay is, Passbook is just the app that shows users their credit cards.
madeofpalk 11y ago
> I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012. Well, they did Apple Pay. NFC is just an implementation detail, and NFC payments is far from dead
evanmoran 11y ago
They wouldn't have had fingerprint readers and the deals with credit card companies to make it then. In my view they didn't kill it they saved it by waiting until they could do it well.
72deluxe 11y ago
Google added NFC years ago and few added it to their phones - manufacturers have started adding it but then Google doesn't offer Wallet here in the UK and then chucked Wallet in the bin I think, so they REALLY didn't help NFC in my opinion.

I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.

by bduerst 11y ago

I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.

johansch 11y ago

They still haven't included it...

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Well it's there for apple things like Apple Pay. There's no real incentive for them to open it up to developers unless they're controlling the space. i.e. for Apple Pay it's nice, or say to unlock your car, or unlock your home's door with Home Kit, but random NFC thingies? They're not really interested.

giovannibajo1 11y ago

That's because they are not a OEM that throws hardware together trying to differentiate, no matter what the software using it will be like. Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type, and that makes them make money but without charging more neither the users neither the merchant, and is interoperable with existing credit cards and banks (including the per-bank customized provisioning process). Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.

sigmar 11y ago
>Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type... What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.
- ptomato 11y ago
  TrustZone/"Secure Enclave" as apple is calling it.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  They were _possible_ in 2012 but getting everyone on board is difficult. Google included NFC on the Nexus S in 2010. The Nexus S was an atrocious piece of junk compared to its contemporary, the iPhone 4. NFC did nothing to make using the Nexus S more pleasurable. Android beam? Nobody used that. Google did not release the NFC-capable Wallet app until 2011, and at that time the integration between the app, the phone (still the Nexus S) and the payment terminals was ghastly. Nobody used it because it was much slower than paying by any other way and half the time it didn't work. The 2011 Galaxy Nexus didn't make things any better. The NFC antenna was attached to the flexible battery cover and the spring-loaded contacts didn't really work. Google was still pushing Wallet but the merchants didn't care because they weren't getting a better price on transaction clearance and close to nobody had the hardware. NFC was a complete basket case, and still remains that way except for Apple.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    What you just described is exactly how Apple killed NFC adoption. The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful. June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up steam, but Apple elected to try to build their own walled-garden payments system using Passbook and bar codes.
    - etchalon 11y ago
      What are you talking about? Passbook was never a payment system, it just had gift cards. Passbook isn't a payment system NOW. Apple Pay is, Passbook is just the app that shows users their credit cards.

madeofpalk 11y ago

> I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012. Well, they did Apple Pay. NFC is just an implementation detail, and NFC payments is far from dead

evanmoran 11y ago

They wouldn't have had fingerprint readers and the deals with credit card companies to make it then. In my view they didn't kill it they saved it by waiting until they could do it well.

72deluxe 11y ago

Google added NFC years ago and few added it to their phones - manufacturers have started adding it but then Google doesn't offer Wallet here in the UK and then chucked Wallet in the bin I think, so they REALLY didn't help NFC in my opinion.