4 ms·

This is a prime example of the "big-corp issue" of today's tech. In the landscape of 20 years ago this "Find-My" use-case would have already been made an indus

This is a prime example of the "big-corp issue" of today's tech. In the landscape of 20 years ago this "Find-My" use-case would have already been made an industry-standard, with an Alliance or SIG of the industry controlling a global spec and roadmap. Tech-companies would have proposed a spec, lobbied competitors and other players to join and contribute to an industry standard to make this happen, because no single company was large enough to launch such a multi-disciplinary product all by itself. You would get a wide range of companies joining, reviewing and vetting the specification to create a strong ecosystem for service providers, component makers, device-manufacturers, etc. Now, a few established big corporations happily use those legacy industry standards (WiFi, BT,...), and instead of contributing back to it to make it stronger, they create proprietary products/services on top, ensuring that everyone else is just a petitioner/supplicant.

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newaccount74 3y ago
What makes me sad about this is how it effectively stops innovation. The barrier to entry is so high, that only a handful companies can launch an item tracker service. And everyone who wants to offer a product in that space needs to play by their rules, they prohibit a lot of use cases. I use a few Chipolo trackers with my iPhone, and I find it infuriating how limited they are. There doesn't seem to be a way to query the data, so I can't eg. make a dashboard that shows location of my items, or make my own app that makes it easier to find my stuff. Every time I look for my keys, it takes me 30 seconds to navigate through Apple's stupid interface, wait for it to update, scroll to the right button, and press the "make sound" button. Without competition we're forever stuck with mediocre software and a fraction of what would be technically possible.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  Absolutely agree. Even worse, I doubt that ANY company can actually compete with such a service. Apple and Google create the tracking-network by baking the capability to scan for trackers into the Smartphone-OS. A competitor first needs to make users install an app to "manually" build this network. There's no company capable to build a global network of equal scale.

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newaccount74 3y ago

What makes me sad about this is how it effectively stops innovation. The barrier to entry is so high, that only a handful companies can launch an item tracker service. And everyone who wants to offer a product in that space needs to play by their rules, they prohibit a lot of use cases. I use a few Chipolo trackers with my iPhone, and I find it infuriating how limited they are. There doesn't seem to be a way to query the data, so I can't eg. make a dashboard that shows location of my items, or make my own app that makes it easier to find my stuff. Every time I look for my keys, it takes me 30 seconds to navigate through Apple's stupid interface, wait for it to update, scroll to the right button, and press the "make sound" button. Without competition we're forever stuck with mediocre software and a fraction of what would be technically possible.

rickdeckard 3y ago
Absolutely agree. Even worse, I doubt that ANY company can actually compete with such a service. Apple and Google create the tracking-network by baking the capability to scan for trackers into the Smartphone-OS. A competitor first needs to make users install an app to "manually" build this network. There's no company capable to build a global network of equal scale.