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Yes! I was just thinking: One hundred person-to-person payment services aren't enough... we need 101! Seriously though, Apple has a terrible time creating onli
by drcode 11y ago
Yes! I was just thinking: One hundred person-to-person payment services aren't enough... we need 101!
Seriously though, Apple has a terrible time creating online services (http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-and-the-cloud-a-magnificent-missed-opportunity/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-and-the-cloud-a-magnifice...) and there is no way another entry in the "Proprietary, heavily policed, middle-man-encumbered social payment tool" is going to go anywhere.
- codyb 11y agoThere's plenty of mapping services and there was one predominant one, and yet Apple took a huge chunk of that market from Google just by having their maps preinstalled on their phones. Apple pay works really nicely. I could see using this new person to person service instead of Venmo if it comes preinstalled, works nicely, has Apple's generally strong privacy controls and policies, and is super simple to use. Seems like a smart move to me on Apple's part.
- drcode 11y agoYes, apple could probably capture 10% of this market and make some profit. If that is your yardstick for "success", they can reach it. But fracturing the market by yet another 10% is not my idea of the future of money.
- happyscrappy 11y agoThere are a lot of encrypted messaging apps but only iMessage is actually usable, plus Apple already has your billing info.
- sunnyps 11y agoWhatsapp would like to have a word with you. With iMessage you have to turn off SMS to make it really secure and once you do that you lose the ability to communicate with a large number of non-iOS users. OTOH Whatsapp is secure by default.
- happyscrappy 11y agoYou don't have to shut off SMS, but it is only encrypted with another iOS device, although I am hopeful they will release an Android client as difficult as that would be.
- selectodude 11y agoYou can disable SMS fallback which makes it so those you iMessage with won't receive an SMS if the message doesn't work while preserving SMS capabilities with non-iMessage users.
- andreyf 11y agoWhatsapp is secure by default Source, please?
- sunnyps 11y agohttp://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ http://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/
- andreyf 11y agoIs it on iOS yet? According to this post [1], it is only on two of the seven platforms that WhatsApp supports. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/34e6si/whatsapps_endtoend_encryption_analysed_its_pretty/cqtxbh7 https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/34e6si/whatsapps_en...
- feld 11y agoPsssst WhatsApp still doesn't have the new fancy encryption on iPhones, and you don't have to turn off SMS completely for iMessage; you just disable SMS fallback for users who are registered for iMessage
- jjtheblunt 11y agoAre you kidding? The ubiquity of very secure hardware in iPhone 6 and later phones does not present a uniquely trusted advantage, over the many clumsy-to-use earlier startups?
- eva1984 11y agoVenmo is quite easy to use IMO and I didn't feel it is particularly insecure because it is backed by PayPal. That being said, a lot of my friends just use Chase QuickPay to transfer money, which works really well. TBH, I don't know how a potentially device/OS restricted service is going to play here. Maybe they need better PR to <i>educate</i> Android users to install their app.
- pbh101 11y agoExperience-wise, I have used both Venmo and QuickPay (and Apple Pay). I would much much rather use a P2P version of Apple Pay than either of the other two. Agreed that it would be yet-another service I'd have to use, but I already have to switch between Venmo and Chase Quickpay and others. In addition, there are well-known cases of Venmo being insecure by design, because it relies on interbank transfers. The response from Venmo is that you should not use Venmo with people you don't trust, because the money can be clawed back. So, for example, for receiving payment for an item you sold on Craigslist. I highly doubt Apple would put its name/the TouchID brand on a service with similar pitfalls.
- facetube 11y agoPaypal has a history of tying up their customers' funds for no good reason. They've done this to online fundraisers in the past, and even attempted to coerce a campaign benefitting the Red Cross into redirecting donations to the United Way in 2005. I refuse to do business with Paypal or Paypal-related companies whenever possible.
- jjtheblunt 11y agoyep...and i agree : i avoid them.
- MBCook 11y agoThat article is a year old, and somewhat off. Apple's recent cloud stuff has all worked very well for me. The only spotty things are CoreData syncing (which may be deprecated, it's certainly not encouraged) and anything that touches iTunes (which is probably the oldest infrastructure they have). Stuff they've launched since then such as iCloud Photos has been working great. Heck Apple Pay works extremely well and that's technically a 'cloud' service.
- drakenot 11y agoIf CoreData syncing is discouraged, what is offered as its replacement?
- cmyr 11y agoCloudKit? https://developer.apple.com/icloud/ https://developer.apple.com/icloud/
- drakenot 11y agoCloudKit doesn't do syncing, or conflict resolution like Core Data iCloud Syncing does. So I guess you have to do those things yourself. Perhaps this is why CloudKit is more reliable -- because it doesn't do the tough parts that Core Data syncing attempted to do?
- kalleboo 11y agoI don't agree, both iCloud Photos and Apple Music have been quite buggy for me.
- lobster_johnson 11y agoiCloud Photos is still very slow. With Photostream, it used to be that photos were available almost instantly. Now I have to wait minutes, sometimes hours, for photos to sync from, say, my iPhone to my Mac. It's not a bandwidth issue on my end.
- lobster_johnson 11y agoThey are hit and miss. iCloud is somewhere between okay and meh (Photos made it worse), Music is terrible, but Apple Pay and iMessage are fantastic.
- alwillis 11y agoApple has several things going for it if it wanted to created a person-to-person payment system: * hundreds of millions of NFC-enabled, Touch ID-capable devices * the platform vendor advantage: it would come pre-installed on new devices and in a future iOS update * users already transact billions of dollars through Apple services: Apple Pay, iTunes and the App Store * unlike many banks and retailers, Apple Pay hasn't been hacked Not only could Apple create a Venmo or PayPal-like service using ACH, it would do something with in-person payments further down the line thanks to NFC and Touch ID. Just as we've seen a large drop in the use of Google Maps on iOS once Apple Maps was good enough and came pre-installed, the same would happen with Venmo, PayPal, Square Cash and the rest, especially for those folks who've never used any of those services and are getting their first smartphone or dipping their toe into app-mediated payments for the first time. Some people have speculated about Apple doing some kind of cryptocurrency (Dell and Microsoft accept bitcoin, for example), what they really need is real-time, multi-currency transactions, with the ability to create their own currency or token if they wanted to and that's Ripple: https://ripple.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-ripple/ https://ripple.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-ripple/. Ripple would enable Apple to do its favorite thing: cut out the middle man. And of course, Ripple would allow users to transact in whatever cryptocurrency they wanted to in addition to fiat currencies.
- pbreit 11y agoI can think of 3 or 4. But 100?