Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's Limits on Third-Party 'Find My' Integration Under Scrutiny
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No they should not. That does not make sense !
Tile ar just wanting a freebie! if they do not like it then they should not use Find My and use their own app instead.
Problem sorted.
Doesn't iOS itself also ask you for permission to use your location, when it's first set up?
The prompt is there for a good reason. If users install a "find a location" app, are they really going to say "never mind, I won't use it" if they're asked to give the app location permission?
No it shouldn't. None of it would exist without them. If you want to go in someone else's yard you play by their rules or leave.
Sounds like a good way to stifle innovation.
Good on Apple for limiting third parties. And the CEO of Tile can go pound sand.
I don't see why these limitations should only apply to third-parties though. If the limitations are a good thing to protect the end-user, why Apple's own apps and services bypass them?
Tile is great, but it can’t track the devices if the app is not running (ie present in the app switcher). I’d rather have it track everything even if the app is disabled, but Apple won’t let it - supposedly for my own good, but I’d rather have a choice.
Don't you have a choice to use an Android phone like most people do?
Yeah with this argument we can just stop discussing everything Apple does wrong
If you are speaking from a user viewpoint, yes, you definitely can enable it in the Settings app. If you are speaking from a developer viewpoint, to be able to get location data of ALL phones with your app installed, with or without each users’ consent, it’s exactly what Apple wants to prohibit, and exactly what us normal users want Apple to prohibit.
Apps can get the location data in the backgound. The location data of the phones is not the problem here. Tile can still track your phones and tablets, as they have wifi.
Tile can’t access the BT antenna to talk to the dedicated Tile devices and ask it “are you still there?”. That’s what Apple is blocking.
Which means if I leave my wallet in the restaurant and Tile was not running in the background, I won’t get an alert that Tile went out of range. It’s not even a privacy issue at this point.
Privacy is great, but it’s the user that should configure it. It seems they are just using it as a good excuse to limit third parties. Everything swinged from “track everyone and everything without consent” (which Apple did do a few years back) to “block stuff even if user wants to give consent”. While retaining special treatment for Apple’s own hardware and software.
If Apple releases AirTags I will solve all my problems by throwing Tile into the trash and replacing my trackers with Apple ones just because they will work 100% as expected. And that’s what Tile is afraid of - Apple having a potential unfair advantage.
Tile can’t access the BT antenna to talk to the dedicated Tile devices and ask it “are you still there?”. That’s what Apple is blocking.
Which means if I leave my wallet in the restaurant and Tile was not running in the background, I won’t get an alert that Tile went out of range. It’s not even a privacy issue at this point.
Privacy is great, but it’s the user that should configure it. It seems they are just using it as a good excuse to limit third parties. Everything swinged from “track everyone and everything without consent” (which Apple did do a few years back) to “block stuff even if user wants to give consent”. While retaining special treatment for Apple’s own hardware and software.
If Apple releases AirTags I will solve all my problems by throwing Tile into the trash and replacing my trackers with Apple ones just because they will work 100% as expected. And that’s what Tile is afraid of - Apple having a potential unfair advantage.
Last edited:
With Apple opening up “Find My” framework, I guess Apple will gradually open it up for individual apps as well, after they figure out a safe (privacy-wise and battery-user-wise) way to do it.
Since everyone here is absolutely convinced the only company that can do it "right" is Apple, why the need for any third parties on the App Store? Just lock it to all the glorious offerings Apples provides, 100% safe!
No way they could come under any scrutiny if they are the only ones on the App Store.
There's an (Apple) App for that!
No way they could come under any scrutiny if they are the only ones on the App Store.
There's an (Apple) App for that!
FINNALY!! MacRumors is the first site I’ve seen push back against this clickbait from the Washington Post. Kudos for lending reason to this topic.
Bravo, Mitchel!
There‘s no chance I’d ever buy a comapny’s tracking device without the backend being run and guaranteed by Apple—and only Apple. This just made it possible for any miniscule startup to compete on a global scale. Sign the NDA, keep your mouth shut and enjoy the benefit of Apple handling this gargantuan task.
Bravo, Mitchel!
There‘s no chance I’d ever buy a comapny’s tracking device without the backend being run and guaranteed by Apple—and only Apple. This just made it possible for any miniscule startup to compete on a global scale. Sign the NDA, keep your mouth shut and enjoy the benefit of Apple handling this gargantuan task.
2021: Apple disables push notifications for third party e-mail apps. MacRumors experts: “it’s for your own good, if you don’t like it, use Mail or get an Android”.
Life is not all or none, black or white. The correct answers are found by reasoning through the grey areas. In the case of Find My capabilities, Apple is better positioned than nearly any other company to provide a secure backend for item tracking. 3rd parties are better positioned to create and advance the physical hardware.
It’s a balance.
I think that if Apple hurried up and actually released AirTags this wouldn’t be such a controversy. Limiting competitors in a space where they haven’t even released a product yet just seems to invite intrigue and legal action
The biggest issue I have with this is the fact that, according to the article, Apple has arbitrary, non-disclosed limits on use of the Bluetooth APIs. If the app passes an "unknown" threshold, the app is blocked from using Bluetooth, and Apple won't even disclose those limits. How is anyone supposed to make a functional product in that situation? Imagine if an electronics datasheet said "if the product exceeds a certain unspecified temperature it will stop working for an unspecified number of hours...We know those figures, but they're proprietary and secret."
I fail to understand everyone saying "Tile, make your own app"... don't they have that already, and isn't that the issue here? That Apple is constantly changing the developer restrictions? It definitely smells bad for any company to first restrict some product that depends on their product, and then almost immediately after offer that same product themselves. Many of the same Apple fanboys are the first to complain when their favorite show gets pulled from their favorite streaming platform, or when some book they paid for disappears because the service got discontinued, or...
And, for everyone who constantly repeats "it's Apple's platform", remember that most of the standards that have been truly successful were open standards that, at the least, had fair, reasonable licensing provisions and costs. If Apple thought location finding was such a great idea, they could have built it themselves quite a while ago (they made the Find My iPhone app...how long ago now? You can't tell me nobody within Apple ever said "hmmm, what if you could find other devices?") It really does feel like Apple waits for other companies to innovate, and then capitalizes on those efforts by changing the developer rules and then implementing the same product themselves without those same limits. The danger of "it's Apple's platform" is that you might get exactly what you wish for - a platform that is 100% Apple, with nobody else contributing. Businesses may just decide it's too risky to develop a product for Apple devices because of the inherent risk that Apple might change the rules and shut them out of the market, then take over and do it themselves. Sure, some companies will be "Android-only", but iOS is a large enough part of the market share, and end users don't really care about all this infighting (they just want the products they paid for to work the way they expect), that many ideas will just never get off the ground in the first place.
(Let's not forget, Apple hasn't really ever "invented" anything. They certainly have applied their design skill to make better iterations of concepts, and their marketing skill to sell those products, but Apple has a long history of acquire-and-conquer. Let's see... GUI = Xerox, mouse = Xerox, all-in-one computer = HP 9830 or Commodore PET, tablet = Windows for Pen Computing, touchscreen tablet = many examples of Windows Tablet PC Edition, MP3 player = Diamond Rio, smartphone = depending on your definition, Nokia/Pocket PC phones/etc...)
[automerge]1595640172[/automerge]
Apple can make full-time location tracking work by simply requiring the user to explicitly go to the Settings app and specifically enable the app that wants full access to location tracking. No prompt in the app, the app simply cannot use full time background location until the user enables it in the settings app. They can require you to enter your passcode (don't allow biometrics) and have a nice warning display indicating all of the risks of allowing an app to have this access. They can also add policies to the App Store that apps will be rejected unless they can demonstrate that such access is actually a requirement for the app's core functionality (like Tile). It's easy to do this securely. Any user purchasing a product like Tile is going to understand that Tile is going to have access to their location, since that's the entire purpose of the product in the first place. This will still block news readers, weather apps, etc. from arbitrarily collecting your location in the background, since those apps don't require it for their core functionality so Apple simply won't let them have that option in the first place.
The problem with arguing "but security!" for everything is it's a very short path from "secure" to "user hostile", because you can argue that just about any user action has the potential to be "insecure". Security is always about tradeoffs, and since there's a very obvious way to implement reasonable security (like I've just described) the argument of restricting for "security" becomes less credible and looks a lot more like just a classic vendor lock-in and anticompetition scenario.
I fail to understand everyone saying "Tile, make your own app"... don't they have that already, and isn't that the issue here? That Apple is constantly changing the developer restrictions? It definitely smells bad for any company to first restrict some product that depends on their product, and then almost immediately after offer that same product themselves. Many of the same Apple fanboys are the first to complain when their favorite show gets pulled from their favorite streaming platform, or when some book they paid for disappears because the service got discontinued, or...
And, for everyone who constantly repeats "it's Apple's platform", remember that most of the standards that have been truly successful were open standards that, at the least, had fair, reasonable licensing provisions and costs. If Apple thought location finding was such a great idea, they could have built it themselves quite a while ago (they made the Find My iPhone app...how long ago now? You can't tell me nobody within Apple ever said "hmmm, what if you could find other devices?") It really does feel like Apple waits for other companies to innovate, and then capitalizes on those efforts by changing the developer rules and then implementing the same product themselves without those same limits. The danger of "it's Apple's platform" is that you might get exactly what you wish for - a platform that is 100% Apple, with nobody else contributing. Businesses may just decide it's too risky to develop a product for Apple devices because of the inherent risk that Apple might change the rules and shut them out of the market, then take over and do it themselves. Sure, some companies will be "Android-only", but iOS is a large enough part of the market share, and end users don't really care about all this infighting (they just want the products they paid for to work the way they expect), that many ideas will just never get off the ground in the first place.
(Let's not forget, Apple hasn't really ever "invented" anything. They certainly have applied their design skill to make better iterations of concepts, and their marketing skill to sell those products, but Apple has a long history of acquire-and-conquer. Let's see... GUI = Xerox, mouse = Xerox, all-in-one computer = HP 9830 or Commodore PET, tablet = Windows for Pen Computing, touchscreen tablet = many examples of Windows Tablet PC Edition, MP3 player = Diamond Rio, smartphone = depending on your definition, Nokia/Pocket PC phones/etc...)
[automerge]1595640172[/automerge]
Apple can make full-time location tracking work by simply requiring the user to explicitly go to the Settings app and specifically enable the app that wants full access to location tracking. No prompt in the app, the app simply cannot use full time background location until the user enables it in the settings app. They can require you to enter your passcode (don't allow biometrics) and have a nice warning display indicating all of the risks of allowing an app to have this access. They can also add policies to the App Store that apps will be rejected unless they can demonstrate that such access is actually a requirement for the app's core functionality (like Tile). It's easy to do this securely. Any user purchasing a product like Tile is going to understand that Tile is going to have access to their location, since that's the entire purpose of the product in the first place. This will still block news readers, weather apps, etc. from arbitrarily collecting your location in the background, since those apps don't require it for their core functionality so Apple simply won't let them have that option in the first place.
The problem with arguing "but security!" for everything is it's a very short path from "secure" to "user hostile", because you can argue that just about any user action has the potential to be "insecure". Security is always about tradeoffs, and since there's a very obvious way to implement reasonable security (like I've just described) the argument of restricting for "security" becomes less credible and looks a lot more like just a classic vendor lock-in and anticompetition scenario.
Last edited:
Apple's people are geniuses. Pitting smaller 3rd party vendors against the biggest 3rd party vendor Tile. Now the anticompetitive arrow is pointing at Tile, at the same time, calling them out.
Apple needs to get AirTags ASAP, so we can stop using inferior products that die in a couple of months. And you only find out they are dead when you need them to work!
Tile understandably wants to survive, but they alone don't determine Apple's privacy roadmap for its client base. Restrictiveness is a side effect of guaranteeing better privacy, not necessarily a direct intention. It's as if Tile wants the rules written specifically for them, and it's never going to happen. It also assumes that the reason AirTags are to exist is specifically to squash Tile out of the market. I am sure it has far more to do with the NFC/beacon concepts (a decentralized network of iPhone users enabling functionality together) rather than because Apple thought the idea of a Tile was the best idea ever.