Yeah, I used to have some Tiles, but I stopped using them because the wallet one was still too big and would break in my pocket, and the others were just too big to put on some stuff. I had some I put in my backpack pocket, too, and it broke as well. The only one I had that didn't break is the one I put in my name tag for work. I'm excited for to try the Apple version.
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Tile Writes to EU Accusing Apple of Abuse of Power
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Yeah, I used to have some Tiles, but I stopped using them because the wallet one was still too big and would break in my pocket, and the others were just too big to put on some stuff. I had some I put in my backpack pocket, too, and it broke as well. The only one I had that didn't break is the one I put in my name tag for work. I'm excited for to try the Apple version.
I actually think it’s closer to the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape in the 90s. Microsoft used their position as author of the dominant OS to give them an advantage over Netscape Navigator. Considering how awful Internet Explorer has always been and how well regarded Navigator was before Microsoft took a tire iron to their knee, it’s hard to imagine how IE could have ever beat Navigator on a level playing field.
On the other hand, if Apple makes users jump through the same hoops to use it‘s tracking product as it’s making Tile users jump through, that seems fair enough. But how much you want to beat that’s not going to happen?
Yes, that is the way the service has to work. It cannot know where your Tile trackers are, if it does not have access to your location data in the background.
Without access to that data, the only thing these devices could do is be made to beep when one was in proximity. While I guess they could offer you the access to your Tile trackers' location data collected by others, even if you do not participate in that network, it seem totally reasonable to me to require participation in the network to benefit from it.
Their problem is simple, they are a network service that requires a critical mass of users running their app to enable their most valuable functionality. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to achieve that level since they cannot provide enough functionality to encourage adoption until they already have it.
Shai Aggasi described the problem this way: "Say I came to you and said: 'I have this great new mobile phone service provider. It will be 10% the cost of the incumbent carriers, and will be 4 times faster. I only need 100,000 customers to make it work, until then it has no value. Are you interested in being a customer?' Your response is most likely going to be: 'Great! I absolutely want to be a customer. Let me know when you hit 99,999 others, I would love to be 100,000!"
Apple has a tremendous advantage in that it already has a massive network of devices. Many of these would already benefit from having this service, so that if/when they launch Apple Tags, they will already exceed critical mass. People want this service for their existing devices (AirPods, MacBooks/MacBook Pros, etc.) and trust Apple to maintain their privacy while keeping the battery usage low enough that they will likely agree to participate.
Tile not only has to hit critical mass, it needs to make it really clear to its users why they need to provide access to their location data at all times for their devices to work. Given how many people on here do not even understand this, I am not convinced they will be able to doI have several Tile trackers, I never used them because I read their privacy policy and decided I did not trust them.
Tile's complaint was over iOS 13 newly requiring users to not only go into the settings to enable "always-on" location tracking but also periodically answer modal dialogs reaffirming that they want it on. AFAIK iMessage's location sharing is immune to that new requirement.
Aside from that, yeah, the location permissions are fair. Though the notifications settings aren't.
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No, if it knows the Tile tracker's location, it doesn't need _my_ location to tell me that.
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Sorry, if it does not have background access to the location, it will not know where my Tile tracker was last time it saw it. Remember, these trackers only act as Bluetooth beacons. They do not have GPS of their own so it uses my device's location to log where it saw the tracker. Again, if some other device saw the tracker and reported it, they would have the tracker's location, but it seems perfectly reasonable to not offer that location to someone who is not participating in the location network.
I understand their approach, I just do not trust them enough to participate in it.
I think it’s only a matter of time before Google offered an in-house product for Android. Then it will be game over.
Heck even if just Samsung got in the game.
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I have bought multiple Tiles for me and the wife, but i stopped using them because the technology is hit and miss. Whenever i really needed to locate something it just failed. That is Tile’s biggest problem, not Apple, who has not even announced a product yet, or anything else. If the product was truly great, i wouldn’t be tempted by a competitor.
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You are going to cause these fanboys a heart attack. I love how you call out Apple on their BS, but some of the people here cannot have any of that.
For "Find my phone", Apple uses a method where a phone reports a location of another phone nearby, but completely anonymously. So what Apple learns is the location of the lost phone, without a clue which phone was nearby.
Again, MS did that anchored on a 95% OS to move Internet Explorer. Apple is doing more or less the same on a significantly lower market share.
There is no dominant position being abused.
That doesn't mean they aren't behaving poorly, which they certainly are.
I have never really understood this argument, especially for software systems. Is it your view that companies cannot add features to their products once they are released? They added an application that clearly seems to be core functionality. My primary systems at the time were a NeXTStation Turbo Color and a NeXTCube with 3 NeXTDimension cards, so Internet Explorer was not my primary browser (I used it sometimes on my Mac).
My memory is different than yours. People that hated Microsoft talked about how great Navigator was, but I remember it being unstable, dog slow and full of memory leaks. The idea that a meaningful number of people would ever have paid $50 for a web browser (Netscape's price) was insane. Had they actually been successful at preventing Microsoft from bundling IE when it mattered (in the first 2-3 years), the result would not have been Navigator's dominance, but some other technology (probably a proprietary service like Compuserve or AOL or something like Flash) winning.
The irony is that IE was what made Windows much less relevant by making the web universally available with no effort, and enabling distribution-less application creation.
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Another month, another letter from Tile to the EU. I wonder if they get a special rate on postage.
How is the argument between these two a EU problem? Elsewhere these two would just approach the argument country by country wouldn’t they?
While obviously there's some improvement on how Apple handled this, I'm actually happy with iOS 13's way of handling background tracking. There was so much stuff that was just spying me in the background and I'm sure a lot of advertisers and other spyware wouldn't mind if the user would say uninformed about it. Also, apps should never be able to turn on any of the location settings on their own, which seems to be the biggest issue with Tile. I'm okay with dialogs asking if I want the app to be allowed to change the settings once, but that's it.
The EU will probably postpone Covid response plans, new multiyear budget (an ongoing and relevant current issue, probably not known in the USA) and Brexit negotiations to take care of this most important issue.
Err, nope, it's not an emotional tie. I have a Linux box, but I can't use it.The sooner you move, the better. I’ve been helping people migrate to non-Apple solutions for years... and during that whole time, I was HOPING Apple didn’t do anything to regain their trust. Luckily for me, they never didAnd, when the Mac Pro was released, they were extremely happy that none of that nonsense mattered to them. There was a couple years of regret/remorse, sure, but they really just needed to break that emotional tie.
Now, they’ve got a whole huge universe of solutions to choose from on their terms.
I agree with you there, I just don’t agree with “won’t let Spotify, Netflix, Amazon and others mention the existence of a website to sign up.”
A few years back, I needed to Linux (which was why I got it). Being a mac guy, I needed help, and a quick google search for a Linux forum to join brought up nothing. A more thorough search again brought up nothing. I wasted many hours of my life, searching online for a Linux forum, and no Linux forum was ever in any of my search results. Literally never.
If I didn't know that Linux forums did exist, I might have been tricked into thinking they didn't.
In the end I had no choice but to scrap the whole project. 'Gutted' just doesn't cover it.
I’m not saying YOU had an emotional tie, THEY did. The moves Apple were making was affecting their day to day dispositions. After helping the first few move over, their outlook shifted quite noticeably. It hadn’t registered with me OR them how much things like not having Nvidia GPU’s and no Apple monitors and no wireless access points was putting them in a bad place.
For example, when the new monitor was released, I got a few emails commenting on the price, but not from a “OMFG APPLE GRRRRRRR!” perspective. More of a, “So, it really costs that much? Wow!” Just generally more relaxed where tech is concerned now.
Said the company that celebrated a culture of throw away technology. I was gifted a tile for Christmas and quite frankly, it does nothing better than my cheap Chinese BT tracker. Range is rubbish. The sound is not very loud, and they want a subscription for the good features. Totally overpriced!
I agree with him. Why pay for tile’s subscription when you can track For free. And everyone and their uncle will make cheap tile knock-offs that undercut tile on price.
Tile never really wanted “openness” - they wanted the ability to replace apple’s walled garden with their own.