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This is based on Wi-Fi Aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Alliance#Wi-Fi_Aware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Alliance#Wi-Fi_Aware Some background

• wiseowise 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • lnxg33k1 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • thewebguyd 1y ago
      Apple will never leave the EU market, that would be a stupid decision. EU is barely smaller than the US market if looking at GDP per capita, it's only a difference of ~$16,000. If looking at population, EU is larger than the US. Hopefully they keep cracking open the walls of Apple's garden and Apple stops region locking the changes to just those markets.
      • lnxg33k1 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • npteljes 1y ago
          I read the comment several times, and I can't figure out your intent, or the message, because of how much it's coded in doublespeak. That might also be what trips others up.
          • lnxg33k1 1y ago
            Don't you think that "They didn't leave the EU, and surely not leave US [if they start regulating]"? Makes it clear? Background sentiment, US politicians always justify not regulating due to the "fear" of corpos leaving?
            • npteljes 1y ago
              I didn't catch on to that at all. I even wrote my own comment, but seeing your reaction to the other guys' comments, I have re-read your original, and frankly, couldn't figure it out. I have asked ChatGPT and it decoded your intent correctly, and even seeing that, I couldn't reconcile it with the comment itself. They say that a lot of communication is lost over text. I'm sure I could have caught the sarcasm if we spoke in real life, but in this textual form, it was completely lost to me, and it seems that for the other commenters as well.
        • shepherdjerred 1y ago
          your comment was a little hard to parse
        • pxc 1y ago
          Your previous comment in this thread doesn't even form a sentence. It's unintelligible.
        • JLCarveth 1y ago
          Your previous comment was a run on sentence and didn't make much sense at all.
    • vkou 1y ago
      The day Apple leaves the EU will be the day that its shareholders will string Apple's CEO up by his own entrails. His successor will immediately reverse course.
      • lnxg33k1 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • mikestew 1y ago
          I read your whole comment, and damned if I know what you’re trying to say. The problem does not lie with the reading comprehension of your audience.
          • lnxg33k1 1y ago
            Don't you think that "They didn't leave the EU, and surely not leave US [if they start regulating]"? Makes it clear? Background sentiment, US politicians always justify not regulating due to the "fear" of corpos leaving?
            • Gander5739 1y ago
              [dead]
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• josephg 1y ago
  This is great! I notice that’s on the ditto blog. I can see why the ditto developers are watching with keen eyes! I have a modern digital camera complete with wifi and bluetooth. There’s an app that lets me connect the camera to my iPhone for monitoring, remote shooting and copying photos. Very useful! But right now the only way for the camera to connect to my phone is through some super complicated song and dance, involving my phone requesting a connection over Bluetooth, then the camera running a wifi access point that my phone connects to (during which time my phone disconnects from my home wifi). It’ll be wonderful when my camera can use wifi aware instead, and this can all happen instantly, without permission prompts and without booting me off wifi in the process.
  • apitman 1y ago
    I really hope we see a resurgence in local-first networking. My wife and I can't even play a LAN game of Age of Empires 2 on a plane unless the flight has wifi.
    • zelphirkalt 1y ago
      AoE2 is not known for great network code, so I think the hopes for that specifically are pretty slim.
      • apitman 1y ago
        The irony is that the netcode is excellent now, but locked to proprietary platforms.
        • zelphirkalt 1y ago
          Is it really excellent? I mean, the game still FPS drops, when only one person in a multiplayer match is lagging. But maybe that could be attributed to engine problems, rather than network code issues. The rest of the code seems not too great either, considering the humongous system requirements, compared to the historical versions of the game. If you ask me, they could have kept it 2D sprites and it would have been completely fine. But they had to go 3D ...
• pzo 1y ago
  It's interesting that apple released 3rd party Wi-Fi Aware SDK for iOS and iPadOS but no for MacOS...
  • praseodym 1y ago
    MacOS doesn’t have a gatekeeper status in the Digital Markets Act (DMA), so Apple doesn’t need to provide it. This shows that they only provide the SDK because of regulatory pressure, and try to maintain their vendor lock-in where possible.
    • manquer 1y ago
      Not necessarily, Since 2015 launch NAN has been vaporware outside android, nobody else support it. Windows does not do so today either [1]. In Linux iw and the new cfg80211 NAN module has support for some hardware. There are few chips in desktop/laptop ecosystem that have the feature, but it is hard to know which ones today, it is more common not to have support than to. AFAIK no major distros include UI based support that regular users can use. Most Chromebooks do not have the hardware to support, ChromeOS[2] did not have support OOB, so even Google does not implement it for all their devices in the first place. For Apple to implement is easier than Microsoft or Google given their vertical control, but not simple even if they wanted to. They may still need a hardware update/change and they typically rollout few versions of the hardware first before they announce support so most people have access to it, given the hardware refresh cycle it is important for basic user experience which is why people buy Apple. What is the point if you cannot share with most users because they don't have latest hardware? Average user will try couple of times and never use it again because it doesn't "work". Sometimes competing standards / lack of compliance are political play for control of the standards not about vendor lock-in directly. Developers are the usual casualties in these wars, rather than end users directly. Webdevs been learning that since JScript in the mid 90s. All this to say, as evidences go this is weak for selective compliance due to regulatory pressure. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2284386/does-windows-have-plans-to-support-wifi-aware https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2284386/... [2] I haven't checked recently
    • josephg 1y ago
• tkel 1y ago
  Pretty sure that ditto article is written by AI ... there's an entire section dedicated to the imagined 5.0 spec..
• felipeerias 1y ago
  I was experimenting with this technology almost a decade ago as part of my work as interaction designer: https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-device-networks https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-dev... It has a lot of potential but unfortunately it has been kept back until now by lack of support and interoperability.
  • ricardobeat 1y ago
    Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well – by banging your phone against the spacebar. It worked 98% of the time and was faster than AirDrop is today, even though we only had 3G. Google acquired it and immediately killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
    • 0xfaded 1y ago
      Waaay back when in Japan, sekigaisen (infrared) was a verb meaning to transfer contact details or photos or whatever between phones via infrared. It was amazing how fast the iPhone took over Japan and killed off their quirky phone ecosystem. Edit: want to emphasize that it was totally ubiquitous. Every phone has it
      • parl_match 1y ago
        yes, "beaming" in the us was also used for quite a while. as in IR beam japanese phones were buggy, feature packed monstrosities. a bunch of companies fighting to check as many boxes as they could. it's not a surprise that they got wiped out by an attempt to make a holistic internet communicator. but for a while, there was nothing like them and their ability to get information on the internet
      • vel0city 1y ago
        My friends in school would send ringtones, wallpapers, and other small files through Bluetooth. It normally worked pretty well no matter the device.
• saubeidl 1y ago
  Thank you for the pro-consumer regulation, EU.
  • dguest 1y ago
    Crazy what those kooky Europeans do. Now if I have a friend, I can - send a file to their phone - charge their phone if they visit me [1] (without a huge bag of accessories) - send them money [2] (without them giving some weird company their banking details) - pay them [3] (even if they are from a neighboring country) What will they think of next?! And to think, some of these things even work in the US. What a time to be alive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Equipment_Directive_(2022) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Equipment_Directive_(202... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro
• madeofpalk 1y ago
  Is it actually? Apple supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware? Any source or confirmation?
• jjtech 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is just incorrect. According to the linked report[1], they tested it for compatibility with OpenDrop, so I think they simply implemented AWDL. That might also explain the limited Pixel 10 rollout, if it required a specific WiFi chipset/firmware. [1] https://www.netspi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/google-feature-review-report.pdf https://www.netspi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/google-fea...
  • gumby271 1y ago
    That's what was confusing to me. It's one thing for Apple to add wifi aware by force, it would be another for them to completely reimplement Airdrop with it. I don't think they were required to do that.
    • shaky-carrousel 1y ago
      They were required to drop AWDL, yes. They had to reimplement AirDrop. https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-eu-killed-awdl https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
      • jeroenhd 1y ago
        They weren't specifically required to drop AWDL, they were just required to implement WiFi-Aware in such a manner that neither technology had an advantage. In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me. I doubt they would've had to implement any specific protocol if they had just opened up AWDL, but I suppose they'd rather keep that closed to maintain the ability to guard their walled garden in non-EU devices.
        • cowsandmilk 1y ago
          > In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me. They need Airdrop to work with phones who haven’t upgraded, so doesn’t feel like a waste to me. And they already have working AWDL code, so it’s just maintenance, probably not a ton of work.
• artursapek 1y ago
  It's hilarious that such a simple thing has taken this long for the world to build, and it's only because Apple was forced to allow it.
  • sneak 1y ago
    Apple's users bought iPhones en masse without them having this feature.
    • artursapek 1y ago
      I understand that. But "this feature" is simply sending a file around between the two big mobile operating systems. It's absurd to me how this is a big product launch in 2025.
  • troupo 1y ago
    Oh, I fully expect Apple to have a hissy fit about this. <queue in incoherent ramblings about privacy and user choice in 3... 2... 1...>
• archon810 1y ago
  Do we know for a fact that DMA has anything to do with it? According to Google, Apple had nothing to do with this announcement. The way I have read it is a bunch of Google hackers reverse engineered Airdrop and that's that. And it's coming to other Android devices, so the Pixel 10 lock-in is just a marketing move.
  • pdpi 1y ago
    The DMA forced Apple to move all of their P2P Wi-Fi stuff from their proprietary AWDL stack to the current Wi-Fi Aware-based implementation. Whatever work Google did to reverse engineer Airdrop was based on the Wi-Fi Aware implementation of Airdrop, rather than the older AWDL. They didn't get the whole stack for free, but it's not nothing either.
    • madeofpalk 1y ago
      Do we have proof this actually happened, or theorising based on EU requirements?
      • pdpi 1y ago
        You can read the actual ruling at https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202523/DMA_100203_1655.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2... This is the "smoking gun" section: 5.4.8. Implementation timing (245) Apple should provide effective interoperability with the P2P Wi-Fi connection feature by implementing the measures for Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in the next major iOS release, i.e. iOS 19, at the latest, and for Wi-Fi Aware 5.0 in the next iOS release at the latest nine months following the introduction of the Wi-Fi Aware 5.0 specification. (N.B. The decision calls it "iOS 19" because it predates Apple announcing that "iOS 19" would actually be called iOS 26) It is possible, I suppose, that Apple intended all along to release this feature with iOS 26. You'd have to be an Apple insider to know for sure. But the simpler explanation is that they did it because the EU told them to.
        • madeofpalk 1y ago
• rafaelcosta 1y ago
  AirDrop works via AWDL, I think you're just wrong...
  • shaky-carrousel 1y ago
    Not anymore.
    • prettymuchnoone 1y ago
      but if airdrop as of OS26 uses wifi aware, and the proprietary awdl version has been shuttered due to the eu regulation, how come devices on that software version can still airdrop to older devices?
    • rafaelcosta 1y ago
      Source?