Tile Decries Apple's iOS 13 Location Tracking Changes, Calls on Congress to 'Level the Playing Field' [Updated]

[trainwrecka]

Ha! I used to love Tile. With an update a month or so ago it requires the ability to ALWAYS track my location. No thanks. I want to find my remote control in the house, not in Central Park. I get that some people need the always on tracking, but give us the option.

I trust Apple to track me waaaaaaaaay more than the Tile company.

 

[zubikov]

Apple is dependent on Intel and has been for some time. Yes, they are working on their own chip now but this is a new development. Apple is dependent on a broad range of other commodity and non commodity products like chips, cameras and displays. I suppose in your mind it means they must have poor products as well.

there’s a fundamental difference...Apple enters into bilateral agreements with third parties and pays them fees/royalties.
So no, it’s not the same at all.

 

[harriska2]

pebble was a good example for your staement being wrong. It was a great idea, but they lacked money and technological and production support. All apple has plenty of. Its not a leveled playing field.
apple watch is shiny but pebble was superior in almost every category.
consumers are very manipulated thru shine and apple has plenty of it.

I bought the Pebble round watch for $200 and found the UI absolutely horrible and the watch very, very slow. Returned it. Then about a year later got a Series 1 that I have to this day. Muuuuuch better.

I have a battery replaceable tile that is, for the most part, worthless and occasionally annoying. If you lose it you have to have someone with the tile app running near it to be found (what are the odds). This has happened to me before and I only know about this as I got the keys back but not because of Tile. Plus it has a button on it that runs ‘find me’ music if your keys accidentally push it. Really hate the thing.

 

[trainwrecka]

They absolutely need it. It is fundamental to how Tile works.

See my post earlier in the thread where I explain this.

This is not true. I used Tile for years with "only while using" tracking. If you need it to track items out of your house, sure, but if the items are located in your house? No need for that level of tracking. I have it attached to two remotes, two car keys, a wallet, and a pair of AirPods. If any of those items were lost outside of my house, it would be too bad for me, because of how inconsistent Tile is with proper tracking. Within the house, Tile works wonderfully.

 

[Bin Cook]

Maybe if Tile wants to control how they help people find their devices, they should make the devices people are using? Not just the things that attach to those devices.

On the other hand, nah.

Came for the first grade logic, was fulfilled after the first response.

 

[Rogifan]

Unless they’re asserting that Apple has infringed on patents I don’t see what ground they have to stand on. I certainly don’t want the federal government deciding what features or services the platform/OS maker can build.

 

[827538]

Tile is just pissed because their entire business model is about to fail...

 

[trainwrecka]

pebble was a good example for your staement being wrong. It was a great idea, but they lacked money and technological and production support. All apple has plenty of. Its not a leveled playing field.
apple watch is shiny but pebble was superior in almost every category.
consumers are very manipulated thru shine and apple has plenty of it.

There is a difference between "competition" and "competitors". The market is always purging competitors, but competition continues. Do not get the government involved. They always stifle competition and innovation with everything they touch. Pebble was dead on arrival - anyone looking at the direction of things knew that. Glad you had a good time with it, but most saw the writing on the wall - a superior product would come along leveraging iOS either by Apple or approved by Apple.

The playing field being level is not a right. Apple has put in the work, so they have advantages. This is how economics works. Remember when Microsoft would never be knocked down? What about Android taking over iOS? When something better comes along, the free market will prevail.

 

[shplock]

honEstly You have no idea what You are talking about.

Neither do you.

 

[Glockworkorange]

This is incredibly frustrating.

There is "competition."

You are just losing (not Tile in particular, at least not now).

Build a better or cheaper widget.

I'm so tired of people thinking "competition" entails kneecapping the leader in the space because you can't keep up.

It doesn't.

 

[AppleFan360]

I have a tile and it works ok. The batteries are user replaceable now btw

 

[now i see it]

any developer/software company/hardware company should know by now that apple steam rolls over the little guys and grabs their tech if they like it. It's been a common business tactic of theirs for decades. The list is long. Working with or along side apple is always very risky. If they really like your stuff- say goodbye to it.

 

[Rogifan]

Apple wouldn’t have any products since nothing in a single Apple product is not based on what another company is doing

Right but in those cases all these companies need each other. Corning needs Apple and Apple needs Corning. Same with Intel, AMD, Sony, Samsung etc. Who needs Tile?

any developer/software company/hardware company should know by now that apple steam rolls over the little guys and grabs their tech if they like it. It's been a common business tactic of theirs for decades. The list is long. Working with or along side apple is always very risky. If they really like your stuff- say goodbye to it.

Or they buy it like they’ve done countless times. Shortcuts came from Apple buying Workflow. Oh and other big tech companies are no different.

 

[trainwrecka]

This reminds me of the DropBox CEO being happy they didn't sell the company to Steve Jobs. Then iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. kept rising. Was DropBox the superior product? Yes - I still think it is and still use it. I have 15GB of free space I think. I have never paid them a dime. iCloud gives 5GB for free- that is good for almost everyone. Now he has "bundled" alternatives he competes with. He made a huge mistake.

 

[SigEp265]

Well Tile shouldn’t be selling products with non-rechargeable/non-replaceable batteries. Once Apple come out with their tile it will revolutionise tracking of products all over the world in a secure way thanks to the clever Public/Private key system they’ve developed with iOS 13.

You can replace the batteries in most of their new products now. The only one I have that you cannot replace is the wallet Tile.

 

[GGJstudios]

any developer/software company/hardware company should know by now that apple steam rolls over the little guys and grabs their tech if they like it.

If Apple were "grabbing" their tech, Tile would file a lawsuit. That's not what's happening here.

Working with or along side apple is always very risky. If they really like your stuff- say goodbye to it.

Yes, it can be risky, but it can also be profitable. Apple has paid millions for many smaller companies (Intel, Shazam, Beats, NeXT, and many more) who developed solutions that Apple wanted to acquire.

 

[Digital Skunk]

While I'm not an Apple apologist I have to saw that Tile really doesn't have a leg to stand on. The playing field is leveled because there are other devices and products out there that people lose regularly.

 

[andywaynebrooks]

The bigger issue is How Best to "Stop the Bullying" by ALL the $1T+ USD market cap companies !

What does "$1T+ USD market cap" mean?

 

[Rogifan]

Apple’s response.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1218254358732632065

 

[GGJstudios]

What does "$1T+ USD market cap" mean?

It means the market capitalization of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, etc. exceeds $1 trillion.

 

[rjp1]

I think the big thing is that Apple just needs to honor our choices and play by their own rules.

I run NextCloud as an iCloud replacement so that I am the one in control of my own data. The way it triggers backing up a new picture is by using the GPS to know when you've moved and then it checks if there is a new photo or video to send to the server. This has worked great in the past, but since iOS 13 came out it is a huge pain.

First, you can't just pick Always allow for location in the app.

Second, even when you do go in the settings and select Always allow for location for the app - you continually get prompted about whether you want to allow this. It pops up randomly while using the phone, so it is easy to touch it without meaning to. One of my kids accidentally hit the wrong button, which caused it to stop backing up their pictures. Luckily, we noticed before anything was lost, but this is just stupid to continually re-prompt.

Third, Apple isn't playing by their own rules. For Find My to function, then they are using Always allow for location. However, nobody has ever seen a popup stating that it has been tracking your location and asking if it should continue to do so.

 

[incoherent_1]

I don’t see Tile’s end game in this. If Apple is developing a competing tracker, but the company is broken up by anti-trust litigation, then the tracker company is spunoff and they still have a successful product that competes with Tile.

 

[Han Xiao]

The problem for Tile is it requires access user’s privacy granted by 3rd party. And the complaint comes from the fact that Tile’s location access requires Apple pops up a generic warning message for potential privacy violation that requires user to approve instead of the more clearer one ‘find my’ uses. The potential solutions could be either Tile prompt a message to request user to approve the location access — which Tile already did, or Apple allows customized text section on the generic warning message for location access — which Apple needs to evaluate the potential risk of having 3rd party abuse its usage.

It is technical possible for Apple implement an white list with key-pair to exempt centain devices to always access location by default by granting ‘find my’ enabled. However, the liability once 3rd party abused its usage apparantly make it not possible unless required by law :-<

 

[whyamihere]

Forget Tile... why the heck does PopSocket need access to my location?!? (unless of course they are attending this hearing to complain about something different)

 

[Han Xiao]

I personally think what Tile is making has no future. Although I am using it, I only rang the buzzer locally when I cannot find my wallet. The innovation part and value added part of Tile is it builds a network to share the finds of others’ locations. It is a big issue for Tile that the idea breaks privacy! It is ok to sell this concept and make the startup running few years ago. Now, privacy are causing more concern to the public, that request 3rd party granting privacy access can be expected to receive resistence.
IMO, Tile product will comes to its end in the near future. Any products can ran locally with BLE and fit into a wallet could be replacement for me. And if Apple builds its find network, the day counts — Tile cannot have same magnitude of ‘beacons’ as Apple’ iPhones.