For some reason, some people spend all year 'round putting strawmen into Apple customers.
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Kuo: 'Apple Tags' to Feature Ultra-Wideband Technology, Likely Far More Precise Than Tile's Trackers
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For some reason, some people spend all year 'round putting strawmen into Apple customers.
What's strawman about what I said. We are observing aforementioned behavior of Apple fans right now inthis thread.
With Apple product events, the takeaways often end up being related more to how Apple is setting the stage for the future. Certain announcements and features make much more sense when you think (and only if you are willing to think) about what Apple will likely unveil in the following years.
Apple Tags make perfect sense for Apple Glasses. By attaching Apple Tags to our most valuable and personal non-Apple items, we will be able to have these objects come to life in an AR world. In the future, we might even be able to see where our items are located by simply invoking Siri and having a small visual appear in the corner of our smart glasses, thus doing away with the need for a dedicated camera, which is one of the biggest criticisms surrounding AR glasses.
It is also likely that Apple is preparing the iPhone platform, such as the processor that will be found in the latest iPhone flagships, to one day support Apple Glasses.
Assuming we see this Apple Tag accessory next week, said product is also an excellent example of how Apple is strengthening the ecosystem that exists around its products, together with Apple Card and Apple Pay.
A stronger ecosystem will help Apple get its wearables platform off the ground (which is partly why the competition doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere in this regard). It will be fascinating to watch how Apple is positioning itself quite well for eventually releasing a pair of smart glasses that will leverage on the broader Apple ecosystem.
The technology isn't exactly new, just not mainstream yet. Similar to iBeacons but now instead of just BLE, it includes UWB (which allows more precise position tracking than BLE). Google the two key phases (iBeacons, UWB) and a list of device makers (e.g. estimote) should appear.
By the way, the technology does not need to be a thick bulky device. I think there is at least one maker which has a sticker-style (use for asset tracking).
If Apple is able to make implementation simplified, there is a whole lot of real world use cases that certainly will benefit from this inclusion into iPhones. Just some quick examples: Home Automation via Shortcut and HomeKit, Retail Stores, Warehouse such as Ikea, Shopping Mall (a pain to locate a shop in a big mall esp when the unit number is no where to be seen).
By the way, the technology does not need to be a thick bulky device. I think there is at least one maker which has a sticker-style (use for asset tracking).
If Apple is able to make implementation simplified, there is a whole lot of real world use cases that certainly will benefit from this inclusion into iPhones. Just some quick examples: Home Automation via Shortcut and HomeKit, Retail Stores, Warehouse such as Ikea, Shopping Mall (a pain to locate a shop in a big mall esp when the unit number is no where to be seen).
Is BLE Bluetooth 5.1? I thought 5.1 was meant to offer very good indoor tracking. Is UWB better?
According to some in the Apple-hate crowd, Tim Apple doesn’t even know what the new products are. They claim he only sees them for the first time when they’re introduced on stage lol.
I suppose it makes more sense that Mr. Apple hangs out here on MacRumors?
Yes, 5.1 is supposed to do something similar, i.e. direction finding with centimeter resolution. Despite the reports of UWB, the Apple tags could be using Bluetooth 5.1.
Or, who knows maybe Apple didn’t find 5.1 suitable for some reason and developed their own solution. We might find out on Tuesday...
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You nailed it.
A new more precise (wideband-compatible too integrated with bluetooth?) iBeacon is also being released. Remember those?
"...the benefits of beacons are two-fold: increase conversion and purchases with right-time marketing, and collect first-party customer data....
(but) a beacon is only activated when an in-store customer who has Bluetooth enabled and has downloaded the store app – and agreed to the terms and conditions – is in proximity. Without the app or Bluetooth turned on, beacon technology does not work...
"Arguably the biggest benefit of beacons is the ability to simultaneously collect first-party data at scale with location-based data. Essentially, beacons are an indoor mapping technology allowing brands to track in-store or at-event behavioral data of individuals."
"Thankfully, and likely in anticipation of an uptick in iBeacon users, Apple’s latest iOS update automatically turns Bluetooth on for users."
They were tired of getting "my iPhone cannot communicate with my Watch any more" "Handoff doesn't work" "AirDrop doesn't find my Mac" etc. support calls.
Anyone get the feeling if these are reasonably priced and have the potential to work as intentioned, they will sell like hot cakes.
Maybe not straight away, but if they get a good reputation.
Maybe not straight away, but if they get a good reputation.
That is a big “if”. There hasn’t been much from Apple that i have considered “reasonably priced”. I don’t think Apple really cares about that though because it’d be exclusive to their ecosystem which would target the respective demographic.
Older people, people with kids, living with others, pets, people with busy lives... plenty of people misplace things or get things misplaced by others.
If you're single, you'll see no issues with throwing your keys on the kitchen table when you come home. They'll be there when you leave the next morning.
Get a wife and kids, and the chance they'll be there the next morning is slim to none. Even placing your keys on a hook somewhere, there's a good chance they'll be moved. Your wife needed to open an Amazon package, so she used your keys and then dropped them on the counter where they were covered by a magazine. Your kids decided to use a chair, hop up, get the keys and use them to 'start' their toy car. Your keys are now in the toy box. Etc. Etc. Etc.
the irony is that they already have built-in ''Find my'', but hey.. this is what are the forums for, hypocrisy
iOS 13 is going to give the apple tracker a massive install base right out of the gate. That instantly addresses one of the biggest problems early adopters face - that there isn't a critical mass of trackers out in the wild to make this feature useful.
Would it be worth putting one of these in a car? I'd imagine if someone wanted to stop a gps signal (tracking device), they would put something over the car to block that signal. Would that be the same for something like this?
It depends on a lot of things, but in general faraday cages work much better at keeping signals out than keeping them in. So it will be better at blocking out GPS than holding in UWB.
Grounding the cage will improve its ability to contain the fields within it, and it’s hard to ground anything on rubber wheels.
If you wrap an automotive shark fin GPS antenna in foil, you may be shielding it in part, but you’re probably also detuning the antenna which makes it less effective at receiving the frequencies it was meant to. UWB is higher frequency, thus has a tighter near field— so you’ll have to get closer to the antenna to detune it.
GPS is a few 10s of megahertz around 1.6GHz. UWB is hundreds or thousands of megahertz, probably between 3 and 10GHz— so its more likely to find a a way through any shielding.
All of that said, I think you might get pretty far in killing one of those tracker mentos if you wrap it completely in foil. If you don’t know where it is though, it’ll be pretty hard to shield the whole car.
UWB is pretty short range though. It’s probably better suited to indoor use than tracking stolen vehicles.
Yeah I have been looking at devices that offer tracking for kids, but you are right they are all to o big and prone to being ripped off my smalls curious hands. Too bad someone hasn't build tracking capabilities into kid's clothing.
You are forgetting to model the phone as a massless, frictionless, sphere. Engineering 101, my friend.
Remember when people said AirPods were too expensive? That aged poorly.
Apple is known for almost everything they make selling like hotcakes, so price isn't an issue for their customers.