So you're saying the only way something happens is if Apple buys out a company instead of doing it themselves?
Oh, no, not at all. I can see how that could be inferred from what I said, but that's not what I meant. Apple is perfectly capable of doing it themselves, if they thought the feature was worth doing. And honestly, they still might, once the iPhone gets NFC capabilities. They just have a history of buying companies that make software they want or hiring people that design things in ways they'd like to incorporate into their devices.
Marty Chinn said:
And once again you show you don't know what you're talking about. It is a universal Android feature. Look up Android Beam.
Again, it's an Android feature, not a phone specific one.
Ok, thank you. I didn't know that. I don't know a whole lot about Android phones - I'm an Apple guy. I don't necessarily think one is better than the other, they each have their strengths and weaknesses and it's more of a "whatever works best for the individual" kind of thing. But as I said many times, I only know what the commercials are advertising, and in the case of the S3 they're touting the bump feature as if it's exclusive to the S3. I never once got the indication from any S3 ad I've seen that the bump feature is cross-platform with other Samsung/Android phones.
Marty Chinn said:
Nothing to stop this from happening in a group method vs an individual method. There are reasons to support both.
True, I just think the need for the devices to be in such close proximity as to make them touch is obtuse. I'm not saying allow everyone on my block to jump in on my iPhone when I open up AirDrop but a range of 3-5 feet would be ideal.
Marty Chinn said:
My understanding is you don't need to bump, but they do have to be close to each other in order to initiate the handshake. The reason the short distance is so you're talking to every phone out there. People are taking a literal bump and focusing way too much on that. It's not a requirement, but using a bump could keep it from always being on and searching which of course would be a battery drain. The physical connection or close contact is brief just for the handshake and then other wireless protocols can be used.
This is also true, but that's why I suggested it as an app - that way it's only searching when it's open, like Find My Friends only stalks people when you have it open.
Marty Chinn said:
This requires setup. Watch the Nokia demo and tell me that's not way easier than using what you're describing here. You have to pair a Bluetooth headset. Airplay requires WiFi. Imagine going to a friends house, who you're not on their WiFi network and simply laying down your iPhone on top of their AppleTV so you can show them some pictures. All you do is just lay it down and it works.
I'm almost positive I read something recently saying that AirPlay was being upgraded to skip WiFi networks entirely to work on a device-to-device connection. As in the iPhone creates its own wireless network with the speakers, bypassing the need to get the iPhone and speakers on the same WiFi network. It was called like AirPlay Plus or something.
Marty Chinn said:
Nobody is saying there aren't other ways but the point is to make things easier. No need to look through a list of connections and select which one you want and to set all that up. A simple connection will do that all automatically for you and then you're in. It's not the only way to do it but it's way simpler and faster. You'd use the NFC to establish the Bluetooth connection.
But then we have the phone on, always searching for that bump signal from the other phone again. Otherwise, how does the phone know when I'm bumping it against a phone/speaker/printer and not setting it on a table or tossing it in a bag? The bump initiates the connection, yes, but then what tells the phone to prepare for the bump, to search for the signal to connect to? Otherwise, every time the phone hits something, it's looking for a signal. Or perhaps I just don't understand how the tech works.
Marty Chinn said:
Of course there's way more complicated ways of doing it. Nobody is saying otherwise. But you seem to not understand how things work and how much easier it can be for the end user. Apple has always been about the user experience and the simplicity. Remember their motto of "It just works"? Why is it you want to go through all these more complicated steps and have a different method for different use cases when you could have a universal one that simply has you touching the other device for a brief second and it's all done automatically for you? Because you're too embarrassed to touch one device to another for a brief second? I guess Siri is pointless because it's silly to be talking to yourself.
Nah, I love Siri. I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to the phone. And I'm not embarrassed to tap my phone against yours or my dad's or my coworker's to share info, even though I think it's stupid in general. I am, once again, going off what the feature is being advertised as, which is easily sharing things with people you don't know or have contact info for already. If I'm at a party and I ask a girl for her number can you really imagine her saying "Yeah here bump your phone against mine." and holding out her phone? Really? At a concert, holding your phone out to the guy a row down from you, "Hey man, that was a sweet shot you got, bump it to me."? I can imagine going to my parents' house with a picture of my brother and I on a hike and tapping my phone on their computer or iPad to give them the picture, sure. But that isn't how the feature is being marketed. It's "Here's a way to share things with strangers so you don't have to go through the hassle of getting their information."
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The only Samsung specific feature as far as sharing photos/videos is that "S-Beam" sets up a Wifi Direct connection over NFC. Stock Android uses Bluetooth, which is much slower. It's pretty likely that eventually stock Android will also use Wifi Direct, just as Samsung was the first to implement hardware acceleration in their browser on Android, but now stock Android has this functionality. Of course, the S3 can still do normal "Android Beam" which will work with any other Android phone. There's also no reason another OS couldn't implement Bluetooth file sharing with an NFC handshake, assuming that "Android Beam" either implements a standard or becomes the defacto standard.
Many Samsung phones with NFC being released now support S-Beam, including their midrange phones:
http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=11195
To me this argument holds about as much water as saying Facetime, iMessages, or Shared Photostream are stupid because only Apple devices can use it, thus nobody will use it.
Fair points. And thank you for explaining the tech behind all these features. For the record I do think Shared Photostream IS useless and stupid as well. I wish I could FaceTime with other phone users but for that there's Skype. But on the FaceTime (and iMessages) front, those things work across ALL iOS devices, whereas I was operating under the assumption [that has now been corrected] that the S3 bump ONLY worked on S3s. If iMessages came out and ONLY the iPhone 5 could use them, I'd be saying What The Fuck to that as well.
Argyle said:
You are talking about Wifi Direct, which (of course) the Samsung phones can do (it's part of S-beam). I've never tried to use it myself but you're going to have everyone get on everyone else's phones to scan the area and then click on the people you want to connect to (hopefully their devices are named descriptively).
Or you could tap the phone you want to send the file to and it'll automatically pair over NFC and start transferring the file.
Ok, I understand things better now. Is this WiFi Direct tech things that only Samsung phones have, like is it their creation? Or is it just general tech that they happened to impliment into their phones first?
And I hadn't considered the fact that people can name their phones unique things. In my mind it was just a list with Apple ID pictures and "Jake's iPhone" and "Hellen's iPad" next to them. Or it could have their username and then under it in smaller letters their full real name. I'm just picturing being at a party and I get a video of someone jumping off the roof into a pool, everyone who wants the video opens AirShare and I tap their names and tap "send". Or there could be a "Send to All" button. I don't know how they'd do it, I'm not a designer at Apple. I just feel like there's a better way then going around tapping everyone's phones.
Argyle said:
The close proximity implies that you need physical access to the other device, which is a security consideration. For example, it might be bad if I can start sending your phone random URLs from six feet away. It might also be confusing if the cash register is trying to communicate with your NFC phone but is also picking up the phones in the pockets of the three people in line behind you.
Good points. That's why I described it as being an app though. That way it's not always on, it's only on and connecting when you have the app open and are ready to share things. I'm sure on the receiver's end there would be some "Do you want to accept this file?" kind of dialogue box or something to prevent malicious transfers.
Argyle said:
Or you could tap the phone against the speakers, or the headset against the phone and have it automatically pair. Same functionality, just easier.
Ehhh, still not sold. The speakers or headphones still have to be put into "discoverable" mode, and at that point the only time I'm saving it not having to enter "0000" on my iPhone as the pair code. And I know that's only for the initial setup, but then we're just going in circles like that AirPlay button discussion going on. I mean once the devices are paired they don't need to touch again, it's just that initial setup. Still seems pointless to me.
Argyle said:
Or you could load the game on your phone and then tap the phones together, which autolaunches the game on the other phone and instantly matchmakes into your own session, without waiting around for Bluetooth scanning to complete or requiring any further user confirmation.
I actually really like this idea of it autolaunching the game on the other person's phone. But then their phone has to be ready to receive the tap signal, right? Like what I was talking about to Marty? Cause otherwise it's always just searching for that tap, wasting battery life? Once again this may just be my ignorance about the technology talking.
Argyle said:
Why would Apple need to buy them if they implemented NFC properly? NFC does everything Bump does and more, and without requiring connection to an external server.
See my response to Marty. They totally wouldn't have to buy them, I was just going off their other acquisitions as an example. I'm confident that, should Apple ever adopt Bump Tech [God forbid], they'll come up with a much easier way of doing it than all that mess you described Bump doing.
