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There are so many in these forums saying that NFC not being in the iPhone is yet another miss for Apple. It makes me wonder how this will truly be used.

I get the use of NFC to be able to waive you phone to use your credit card (which some would say passbook can serve the same purpose if adoption were to increase), but what are the other applications for NFC that would truly change your life?

This is a serious question. Not trolling at all. I just don't see the widespread multifunctional use of NFC that causes people to get upset every time a new device is released without it.

Except for the fat that it isn't.
 
In some use cases it makes sense. The Apple store app for example. I already have the stuff I want to buy in hand and I don't want to go to some register to bump my phone, although bumping against the boxes to add them to my cart would be cool. ;-) Therefor I need a longer range technology, but it's because I'm interacting with a single well know instance, the Apple app and a single payment system.

Other use cases... ambiguity comes into play. 'No, I don't want to try and unlock every hotel door because they are all in BLE or Wi-Fi range, I want to open THIS door I'm standing in front of'. Tap... Click, Room service.

So those hotel doors will use an 'immediate' range beacon.

That's what I'm saying... BLE is flexible. It supports many different ranges, but vendors will pick the most suitable for their use case. If people want to attract you to their store, they'll probably put the maximum range on the beacons, but for payment systems or unlocking hotel room doors, the range will clearly be very small. Either that or there will be some way of choosing between the devices in range.
 
So those hotel doors will use an 'immediate' range beacon.

That's what I'm saying... BLE is flexible. It supports many different ranges, but vendors will pick the most suitable for their use case. If people want to attract you to their store, they'll probably put the maximum range on the beacons, but for payment systems or unlocking hotel room doors, the range will clearly be very small. Either that or there will be some way of choosing between the devices in range.

I get it. But the moment two overlap its game over in terms of simplicity. I have one range in my phone, which is max range.. I have to, to be able to support varying iBeacons. The moment my phone sees two signals, something needs to disambiguate.

I personally don't want that some thing to be me. And it certainly don't trust someone else to disambiguate for me. "Of course my ad is what you are trying to focus on".

iBeacons is cool. But I see a feature, not to far off, where EVERYTHING wants to interact with me. Everything has some tag on it to pump me ads, coupons, services, whatever.

I need something then when I want to interact with it there is zero ambiguity.
 
I get it. But the moment two overlap its game over in terms of simplicity. I have one range in my phone, which is max range.. I have to, to be able to support varying iBeacons. The moment my phone sees two signals, something needs to disambiguate.

I personally don't want that some thing to be me. And it certainly don't trust someone else to disambiguate for me. "Of course my ad is what you are trying to focus on".

iBeacons is cool. But I see a feature, not to far off, where EVERYTHING wants to interact with me. Everything has some tag on it to pump me ads, coupons, services, whatever.

I need something then when I want to interact with it there is zero ambiguity.

iBeacons interact with specific apps from what I've read, so if you don't have an app installed that interacts with that specific iBeacon, then nothing should happen. It's not like you're going to get spammed 300 times as you walk down the street.

Regarding the multiple beacons issue... all I'm saying is that I'm sure all of the scientists that have worked on iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy have thought of that. There must be a solution; I'm just not sure what it is.
 
NFC is cool as **** that's why. Sony are doing a pretty awesome job with it. Stuff like bluetooth headsets and their lens are one tap pairing. Other uses include having those token things in different places, car etc that change phone settings instantly.

You can argue whether or not you'll use those features, but it's pretty awesome when done right.
 
I am more likely to come across something to scan my phone optically. I'm not opposed to tapping it. It's nice. But it's barely more convenient. I'm already holding the phone. It's barely any more effort to swipe and scan than just scan.



You are providing info with no further interaction on your part. Nothing else is occurring client-side. You're not sending an email. You're not performing an action on the server. It is performing an action and that is all. The terminal you interact with is your avatar. It logs in. But you do not.

So yes, you are interacting with a remote computer via a local terminal. And if this were 1970, they would consider that logging in. But in 2013, no one considers that sort of transaction logging in. No one says they logged in to buy some gas.

You are wrong. It doesn't matter if a layman considers it logging in. If you identify yourself as a specific individual or account to a device, you have logged in.

You cannot replicate NFC over Bluetooth or passbook. Bluetooth effectively broadcasts your presence over a distance you can set, while NFC pairs at close range only. Bluetooth is always on; nfc can be turned on only when the phone is stinulated. Passbook allows you to optically transmit info at close range like NFC but it is static info only. NFC is more secure and can transmit more data
 
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You are wrong. It doesn't matter if a layman considers it logging in. If you identify yourself as a specific individual or account to a device, you have logged in.

You cannot replicate NFC over Bluetooth or passbook. Bluetooth effectively broadcasts your presence, while NFC pairs at close range only. Passbook allows you to optically transmit info at close range like NFC but it is static only. NFC is more secure

Bluetooth low energy supports immediate ranges - just like NFC.
 
iBeacons interact with specific apps from what I've read, so if you don't have an app installed that interacts with that specific iBeacon, then nothing should happen. It's not like you're going to get spammed 300 times as you walk down the street.

Regarding the multiple beacons issue... all I'm saying is that I'm sure all of the scientists that have worked on iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy have thought of that. There must be a solution; I'm just not sure what it is.

I'm not an expert on iBeacon but even if there are specific apps I may have two that overlap... Subway and Panda Express are next to each other in the food court. "Here's a coupon, please eat me" (could not resists, haha). I love Subway chopped salad (which I had for lunch today) but that damned Orange Chicken is so hard to resist, so I have to have both apps.

iBeacon is awesome. If I were a retailer I would place these things all over my store and send people ads for slimming jeans and butt lifting heals, and then I would use NFC for checkout.
 
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NFC is dying rapidly. Apple was 100% correct in NOT adopting it. It won't be around in another year or 2. Apple will have they're own payment system and using entirely different text like BT.

Yeah NFC was on the brink but now it is dead. Would have been silly to include it. Even apple could not have saved it
 
In 2 years BLE will have completely taken the position that NFC was intended to fill in North America. It does everything NFC does and more and doesn't require devices to be so close in order to be used. iBeacons (and the eventual Android equivalent) is the future. BLE is better and most iOS 7 and Android 4.3 devices will support it.
 
You are wrong. It doesn't matter if a layman considers it logging in. If you identify yourself as a specific individual or account to a device, you have logged in.

You cannot replicate NFC over Bluetooth or passbook. Bluetooth effectively broadcasts your presence over a distance you can set, while NFC pairs at close range only. Bluetooth is always on; nfc can be turned on only when the phone is stinulated. Passbook allows you to optically transmit info at close range like NFC but it is static info only. NFC is more secure and can transmit more data

The point, as I thoroughly explained was that no one considers paying with a credit card logging in because there is no interaction with the system possible other than authentication. And technically, it takes your credentials and logs in on your behalf. It's done by proxy.

In straight up computer terms, authentication like that is logging in. But no one says, "I logged in to pay for my gas." This is known as connotation, and it's how most people use words. But if you feel like being someone who wants to talk about logging in to pay for gas, go ahead. Log in to your phone too. Hell, you could even log into your house. I mean a key is authentication. It most certainly would be with an RFID reader and an NFC phone.

And you can replicate the functionality of NFC with an optical scan. And where do you get bluetooth cannot be turned off? All RF chips on an iPhone can be disabled. If it's turned off it can't sense other things like NFC can, but it can be turned off.

Most of the use cases we talked about do not need dynamic data, so it really doesn't matter that it can be changed, at least not in this discussion so far.
 
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