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Think home automation. You enter your home, the lights go on. You go in your living room, Apple TV wakes up and your iTunes Server wakes up.

You leave your house, everything goes to sleep after 5 minutes.

etc.

Not sure my other (non-iPhone wielding) half will be pleased with that if I head out without her in an evening and have forgotten to navigate through the menus to disable the feature. 5 mins later to be plunged into darkness...
 
I doubt this will get too much of a mention during the keynote. This sort of thing is great for developers but best discussed in the smaller workshops. Maybe it'll show up in one of those "and a bunch more features" slides. The most attention I think iBeacons would get during the keynote is a "look what our great developers are doing" video. It's just not the sort of thing you demonstrate on stage or show off code for on stage.
 
Wait till your walking down the street listening to your iPhone , songs , podcasts or watching a video, netflix etc and bam ibeacons ad interrupts your listening. iTunes Radio adverts taken to the extreme. Interrupting whatever your listening or watching. Bluetooth on by default with no way to switch it off. I called it first :)
 
to right Apple doesn't knows whats in store for this because there confussed.

First they mention this, then NFC because iBeacon is un-secure, now they looking into this again ?

It's a payment system is it not ? Is i was busted the first time, what makes Apple think about this again ?

Perhaps they jumped in quick with NFC ?
 
There's A LOT of potential uses for this. Example:

You enter a super market, go to the frozen food aisle, and you receive a message: "This week we have frozen pizza XXXXX at 50% discount".

The sheer amount of spam could be an issue though. Could you perhaps get a message every time you walk by every store along the mall?

Messages from every store whose app you have installed and running. Wouldn't be that many, only the ones you are interested in.
 
Location awareness indoors. Interactive museum tours. Curated walking tours through cities. Ballparks are already using them to offer up better seats to those sitting in the nosebleeds when the stadium is undersold.

The possibilities are literally endless, you just need to have a bit of imagination.

I've got a neat little concept for indoor rock climbing that I've been mulling over, but I'm waiting for the watch to tie it all together.... ;)

And yet the locked down nature of it has meant it's been an absolutely miserable failure in it's first year.

It's first year, of it's existence, and it's done nothing. Why do people think that will change?

Ping mk 2.

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And why would a museum ever use this?

They already have location aware audio tour devices. They are profit generating, as they can be used by everyone and charged for, and they require no maintenance or particular knowledge to get working.

iBeacons will require your users to have one specific brand of phone, to not have turned them off in some obscure settings menu, to download an app when half your visitors are tourists and have no internet connectivity, require additional staff training and will be harder to generate revenue from. iBeacons have absolutely *no* and I mean *no* relevance to anyone except for advertising, and even then the fact you've got to install an app first makes them useless.

If it were a cross brand open standard like Bluetooth it might stand a chance, but as it is it's a waste of Apple's resources.
 
In all honesty I guess I fit what Jobs always went on about: I see absolutely no useful purpose for iBeacon, other than to be pestered by intrusive ads while I shop.

Perhaps Apple will prove me wrong, but honestly I want longer battery life fro my iDevices, usable Maps outside of the US, the option to set columns widths in the Finder so that they automatically adjust to file name length, etc. iBeacon sounds to me like an idea worthy of Google.
 
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And yet the locked down nature of it has meant it's been an absolutely miserable failure in it's first year.

It's first year, of it's existence, and it's done nothing. Why do people think that will change?

Ping mk 2.

----------

And why would a museum ever use this?

They already have location aware audio tour devices. They are profit generating, as they can be used by everyone and charged for, and they require no maintenance or particular knowledge to get working.

iBeacons will require your users to have one specific brand of phone, to not have turned them off in some obscure settings menu, to download an app when half your visitors are tourists and have no internet connectivity, require additional staff training and will be harder to generate revenue from. iBeacons have absolutely *no* and I mean *no* relevance to anyone except for advertising, and even then the fact you've got to install an app first makes them useless.

If it were a cross brand open standard like Bluetooth it might stand a chance, but as it is it's a waste of Apple's resources.

It's not locked down, at all. You can make android devices into iBeacons and you can make them read iBeacons. Yes it requires a bit of work, but there is nothing stopping other platforms from using iBeacons. Its simply an addition to the bluetooth protocol.

http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/ibeacon/android/

http://www.cultofandroid.com/50952/beacon-guide-android-users/

"Is iBeacon just for Apple users?

Surprisingly, Apple’s iBeacon supports Android devices. If a store, stadium or home automation product goes with iBeacon, and uses Apple’s iBeacon API, Android users can still take advantages of it if an Android app has been created for it."

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17875430/combine-ibeacon-bluetooth-low-energy-with-android-4-3

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-outs-ibeacon-specs-and-theyre-android-agnostic-25318469/

"Apple outs iBeacon specs (and they’re Android-agnostic)"
 
Hmmm I still don't see the benefit of iBeacon... Things just pop up on your screen about products and services inside of stores?

I just hope it becomes more than just another way to push products. I simply don't need more ads shoved in my face. The more ads there are, the less effective each becomes. If this is what it becomes, it will fail.

It's gotten to the point that whenever an ad pops up, I'm repulsed. My brain attempts to block it out and sees the sponsor as a divisive enemy.
 
I just hope it becomes more than just another way to push products. I simply don't need more ads shoved in my face. The more ads there are, the less effective each becomes. If this is what it becomes, it will fail.

It's gotten to the point that whenever an ad pops up, I'm repulsed. My brain attempts to block it out and sees the sponsor as a divisive enemy.

Again, you need to opt in for anything to come up.
 
to right Apple doesn't knows whats in store for this because there confussed.

First they mention this, then NFC because iBeacon is un-secure, now they looking into this again ?

It's a payment system is it not ? Is i was busted the first time, what makes Apple think about this again ?

Perhaps they jumped in quick with NFC ?

Have you fallen off the wagon again!? :D
 
There's A LOT of potential uses for this. Example:

You enter a super market, go to the frozen food aisle, and you receive a message: "This week we have frozen pizza XXXXX at 50% discount".

The sheer amount of spam could be an issue though. Could you perhaps get a message every time you walk by every store along the mall?

1. The big sign with an arrow pointing at the pizza and "50% off" on it for the 90% of the population that doesn't have an iPhone won't be obvious enough?

2. Now someone will say, "but you have to install the app for each store to get their ads. It's all opt-in at this point." That'll go over well on an 8GB iPhone. And how long will it be before all of the stores in the mall figure out 'Hey! We can just have one app for ALL of our stores"? Then you install one app and are automatically opt'ed-in for all ads.
 
False.

You HAVE to install the app that corresponds with that specific ibeacon for it to notify you of anything. As of right now it is strictly opt in.

So you mean you must first download the Starbucks and Banana Republic apps or ones that come with each individual iBeacon? If that's the case then there is no commercial application, only personal
 
So you mean you must first download the Starbucks and Banana Republic apps or ones that come with each individual iBeacon? If that's the case then there is no commercial application, only personal

Unless Apple has massively changed the ibeacon protocol, this is the case. An ibeacon can only prompt a users device if they have the app that corresponds installed.
 
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