5 New AirDrop Features Coming in iOS 17

[TracesOfArsenic]

Apple should work with Google to make proximity AirDrop and namedrop function cross-platform. To fix in-person sharing of photos and contact cards like how Matter fixes peripheral set up and real-world compatibility.

Apple should similarly release iMessage clients on Windows and Android to allow for seamless personal and business chat from Apple devices to all platforms right out of the box. In both cases you’re taking an Apple feature and making it more powerful for Apple users. Yes, technically you’re giving something away but for the benefit of the Apple ecosystem experience and the world.

I gave Apple feedback two and a half years ago (several times with detailed argument) for them to give the Wireless Power Consortium their MagSafe technology and convince them to add it to their next standard, so every iPhone user could benefit from the technology in the real world. Fast food tables, hotels, Ubers, Lyfts and for personal owned vehicles. Thanks to Apple getting the message in our future potentially all vehicles will have such magical charging built in from the factory. Two up front and two in the rear ideally. Driver or passengers can snap on your phone and get that perfect connection every time. Car brands were not adding this until it was standardised. Similarly, to make other features truly useful (interacting with other people to have the feature work) it makes sense that such scenarios would require a standard such as for sharing your contact. "Here's my business card.... whoops, didn't realise you have the wrong shaped wallet."

Certain technologies work best when they become the industry standard and everyone is on the same page. In-person contact card sharing and photo sharing are two such features.

100% this should happen but Apple just aren't about sharing or improving the world in an altruistic way. They're a money hungry corporation (more so now than ever) first and foremost.

 

[grobik]

Can we please just get handoff of music from watch to HomePod?

 

[k1121j]

AirDrop became almost useless for me when I had to start turning it on for everyone every time I want to use it. 95% of the time I use it I don’t have or want the other person in my contacts. Just let me accept it from everyone again.

 

[Damian83]

or maybe a simplier airdrop that uses current network configuration. I have an imac connected via lan and a macbook that doesnt need BT. If i want to use airdrop i have to enable wifi on the imac and bt on the mb. Im using the good old samba instead...

 

[jclardy]

These are actually really cool, especially SharePlay over AirDrop. Pairing/joining local multiplayer games has always been a pain, just tapping phones together will be a huge improvement. Plus completing transfers over the internet.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

100% this should happen but Apple just aren't about sharing or improving the world in an altruistic way. They're a money hungry corporation (more so now than ever) first and foremost.

I agree with your sentiments of Apple, but making your ecosystem experience better doesn't lose you money.

 

[Bazza1]

NameDrop: So doing (almost) everything I could do with my Palm Pilot from 2000.
Cool.

 

[Swift]

I swear we had a feature like NameDrop from many years ago. Or am I crazy? Maybe it was a Linkedin feature or some 3rd party apps.

NameDrop seems like it's an annoying feature - potentially a privacy concern.

It's one of those features that look cool in a demo but hardly anyone will ever use it, and it'll annoy people more than it will be used intentionally.

I also don't understand the new Airdrop feature. Why would you hold the phones close to each other, which is very unnatural, instead of just selecting who to Airdrop to? These proximity things almost never work the way you want them to.

I distinctly remember an Apple commercial where a handsome young man sees a beautiful woman in a train station, but then he loses her. He jumps into a train right next to hers, and he put his srreen against hie window and and she laughs and put her phone next to his— and a transfer took place, though I don’t know if that was called AirDrop.

I find AirDrop is a little cumbersome. I think about using it occasionally, and it usually takes a few tries from me to remember how to do it. This seems in the quick demo, to be some automatically when you get your phones close.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

I agree with your sentiments of Apple, but making your ecosystem experience better doesn't lose you money.

I don't disagree with you. It buys a whole heap of good will with customers from both sides of the fence but Apple's point of view is that keeping features exclusive 'forces' people to jump ship to Apple through frustration. It's always been Apple's way, for better or worse.

 

[_Spinn_]

I’m very excited to try all of these features out.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

I don't disagree with you. It buys a whole heap of good will with customers from both sides of the fence but Apple's point of view is that keeping features exclusive 'forces' people to jump ship to Apple through frustration. It's always been Apple's way, for better or worse.

With contact card sharing it definitely ruins the potential of the future.

 

[maxoakland]

Continue AirDrop over internet is such a cool, useful feature. Exactly the kind of thing that makes me use Apple products

 

[marcg007]

We were all regularly quickly and easily sending our contact cards via standard Bluetooth between Nokias and many other phones back in the 90s, what's taken Apple so long?

(And, back in the 90s, everyone collaborated on making protocols like Bluetooth interoperable standards, rather than inventing their own stupid walled garden non-standards that don't work universally. That iOS doesn't also support standard Bluetooth file exchange to be able to speak to the rest of the world is one of Apple's more exasperating decisions…)

Apple can support device to device sharing over Bluetooth but it’s not on by default. However, I’d think sharing over Bluetooth could open up some security concerns.

 

[marcg007]

Apple seem absolutely determined to have ON DEVICE surveillance in whatever guise they have to use. its wrong, its utilising customers own equipment bought and paid for. By all means if it’s on Apple Servers/Google etc., they can peek all they like, but users devices should be sacrosanct. It’s a slippery slope to having backdoors to our own devices for all and sundry. Makes a mockery of any comments about Apple privacy if ON DEVICE. Apple have already been found wanting over these issues, the same as they seem to acquiesce to whatever Chinese Government wants imposed on iPhones there.

How is apple doing “on device surveillance”? The whole point, as I understand it, of so much stuff happening on device, is so that no one can see or access it except the device owner.

 

[rmariboe]

yea the chinese gov pushed this for apple in china. Apple said it would be china only and now its everyone. no one was asking for this.

I welcome this change.
I don’t want other people’s devices popping up in my airdrop list, and I have accidentally sent content to people I don’t know who have airdrop enabled for everyone.

 

[Motorola68000]

Perhaps some will notice today in a crocodile tear move Apple are with others refusing to adjust end to end encryption. Yet it is clear Apple don't mind usurping devices its sold to engage in surveillance.

"The only way of doing that, many tech experts argue, would be to install software that would scan messages on the phone or computer before they are sent, called client-side scanning.

This, critics say, would fundamentally undermine the privacy of messages.

In 2021 Apple announced plans to scan photographs on people's iPhones for abusive content before they were uploaded to iCloud but these were abandoned after a backlash. It has now clearly signalled its opposition to any measure that weakens the privacy of end-to-end encryption."

So Apple shout from the rooftops about end to end encryption, yet are quite happy to have systems ON OUR DEVICES that are far more dangerous, because they monitor EVERYTHING on devices we have purchased.

That is a backdoor to everything you hold, whether end to end encryption in messages or not, because it then intercepts via ON DEVICE scanning whatever information it decides, or whatever information Government decides it needs, yet shouts about protecting end to end encryption at the same time as it is happy to have surveillance software on your device that bypasses end to end encryption!

Apple joins opposition to encrypted message app scanning

WhatsApp and iMessage could be forced to scan for child abuse images under the Online Safety Bill.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Motorola68000]

How is apple doing “on device surveillance”? The whole point, as I understand it, of so much stuff happening on device, is so that no one can see or access it except the device owner.

You clearly haven't read what the software does. It even references 'on device', which was what they tried to foist over the CSAM fiasco before retreating under pressure from all.

 

[MacPrince]

You clearly haven't read what the software does. It even references 'on device', which was what they tried to foist over the CSAM fiasco before retreating under pressure from all.

I read what the software does. It recognizes potentially explicit images using a machine learning model that runs on your iPhone and blurs them based on what it figures out. It does not report anything off the device.

If you're so convinced that Apple is spying on you, why do you continue to use the products?

 

[Motorola68000]

I read what the software does. It recognizes potentially explicit images using a machine learning model that runs on your iPhone and blurs them based on what it figures out. It does not report anything off the device.

If you're so convinced that Apple is spying on you, why do you continue to use the products?

Apple like other big tech companies are being effectively 'forced' to sacrifice any semblance of privacy and security. Client side scanning represents the worst of the worst. Server side scanning would suffice and Apple and others can do whatever they like with THEIR OWN EQUIPMENT, but client side scanning on our devices that we own, we paid for should be sacrosanct.
Just an excerpt from article today:
"End-to-end encryption", "backdoors" and "client-side scanning" - the biggest row in technology sounds very complicated.
But really it comes down to a very simple question. Should technology companies be able to read people's messages?

>>But its not just people's message, client side scanning opens up your device to EVERYTHING ON IT, which makes any end to end encryption before data gets to you, totally irrelevant and useless.

Why do you think so many experts are so concerned about it! it represents giving a total backdoor to everything on your devices, and where it may even give access to devices connected to your device!

So keeping end to end encryption on messaging, or anything, when as soon as it gets to your system. ON DEVICE client side scanning makes it accessible to governments to Apple and other organisations, when its complete rubbish to suggest child safety is the motive, because server side scanning could achieve that, and where does anyone really think that those involved in the heinous activities of child related offences can't find a way round that?

So using these moral crusades that don't really hold up to scrutiny compared to the loss of privacy and security for the massive majority not involved in such things, is disgusting, and it is about providing a backdoor via client side scanning so your device is nothing more than a spying device for those who WILL use that backdoor, and if anyone thinks it will be restricted to just looking for nude pictures then they are seriously kidding themselves.

E2E encryption: Should big tech be able to read people's messages?

Who will win in the years-long stalemate between governments and big tech around super-secure messaging?

www.bbc.co.uk

Fact Sheet: Client-Side Scanning - Internet Society

Client-side scanning (CSS) broadly refers to systems that scan message contents for matches or similarities to a database of objectionable content before the message is sent to the intended recipient.

www.internetsociety.org