Core NFC beta | Hacker News Reader

Core NFC beta

developer.apple.com

46 pointsrunesoerensen33 comments

Does this mean that iOS devices might be able to use something like a Yubikey? Reading the Yubikey Neo spec sheet, it looks like the answer very well may be yes!

Not sure I understand the use-case here...for 2FA? Or something else? Seems like someone's phone and Yubikey would generally be in the same location, anyway, so it's not much of a second factor, no?

Most people carry their 2nd factor on a keychain, which is usually in close proximity to their phones - anyway, I think the benefit is that we can stop keeping one factor on a device that's potentially remotely exploitable (google auth on a phone)

YubiKey NEO owner here. I can't seem to get Core NFC to read my device unfortunately. It is completely possible that I have something misconfigured however. It is definitely something that someone more experienced than me should explore further.

> Reading NFC NDEF tags is supported on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

There is no reason to limit this functionality to the 7. Very disappointing.

One small reason is that Japan's Felica standard was only supported from the iPhone 7.

In Japan it's been common practice for certain smart cards to have Android equivalents (most of them here ship with NFC), so you have a decent app ecosystem that supports it.

For example I can get a Starbucks app on my phone and use that through NFC instead of a physical card

FeliCa is only supported in iPhone 7 sold in Japan AFAIK (the one with 総務省指定 marking on the back)

No idea this person's track record (nor the record of the japanese writer being cited) but this site asserts that all iPhones 7 have the same NFC chip and that a future iOS version (11?) will enable it worldwide. https://atadistance.net/2017/04/03/iphone-7s-taking-felica-w...

Interesting. I've searched a bit and apparently this is due to Japan law requiring device that emissed over 500 µV/m within 3 meters to have a regulatory mark.[1]

[1]: http://www.sankei.com/smp/economy/news/160920/ecn1609200029-...

I don't know about my track record either

But all the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch 2 teardowns by Chipworks and all, in Japan and other countries, revealed the same NXP make NFC chip. Journalist Nobi was basically saying that he thinks the timing is right for Apple to go wide and enable FeliCa worldwide in the new iPhone models later this year. I think he is right. The law cited in the comment below has been amended to allow the Japanese government regulatory mark in the screen credits rather than etched on the case.

I have also heard from various sources that JR East did not have the ability to deal with Suica Apple Pay support issues from visitors abroad and asked Apple not to activate FeliCa for devices sold outside of Japan. Word is that this is not an issue any more.

Do not have access to iOS 11 until the public beta but would love to know if FeliCa works on all iPhone 7 devices or not.

Starbucks Japan doesn't give you points for using their card, right? It just holds value like a Suica?

I'd rather stick to using Suica on my iPhone because… you can refill it with an American credit card… and no matter what you spend it on, the refill counts as travel spending!

Can you cash out your Suica to JPY?

No, but you can buy anything in a convenience store with it. You can refund a physical Suica but I don't know if you can do it with a virtual one.

The existence of this limitation makes me think that there's a hardware difference that's important.

It's not been uncommon for apple to limit new features to new phones, even without a hardware limitation.

No it's not. Features that are limited to new phones that don't need some dedicated hardware are typically done for performance reasons, which is still a hardware reason.

Not that I can see. The NFC chip in the iPhone 6S is the NXP 66V10, and in the iPhone 6 it's the 65V10. These appear to just be different packages of the underlying PN544 part from NXP.

It supports reading NDEF tags (as I imagine every commercially-sold NFC chipset does - they're called "NFC Forum tags" in the datasheet [1].) There was also no hardware reason to limit Suica support to the iPhone 7; this NFC controller supported FeliCa too.

1: http://www.nxp.com/documents/leaflet/75016890.pdf

Indeed. But still bi....g improvement.

I've been playing with this a bit, I posted my findings on a tutorial here: http://jamesonquave.com/blog/core-nfc-tutorial-for-nfc-on-io...

I am not familiar enough with NFC, would this allow standard NFC payments through apps OTHER then apple pay?

I know Apple has been getting some pressure (regulatory) about banks not being able to use their own apps and having to pay for Apple Pay.

Hopefully this will allow NFC tap for airplane boarding passes instead of those awful screen scanners, as one example.

>Detect NFC tags and read messages that contain NDEF data.

Looks like it just allows the iPhone to read other tags.

>Reading NFC NDEF tags is supported on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

I wonder why the iPhone 6/6S and Watch aren't supported?

Yes, that is a bummer. It means that all those NFC iphonse 6/6s in countries without Apple pay will never use the capabilities. Just stupid.

Not out of the box, since normally the payment terminal is the reader.

Theoretically this could be switched such that the payment terminals would send out a unique ID over NFC, which the iPhone would then relay to the terminal via a server.

I've been wondering… Could this allow an iPhone to take Apple Pay from another iPhone?

It seems to me like apple should be able to make it possible to accept Apple Pay when someone is using an iPad (for example) as a terminal.

You can do this with Android. I was going to put it in our app but I pivoted.

The receiver for NFC payments needs more electric power than the transmitter, because for a credit card it actually powers the other side. I think. Someone from Square told me this at a party once.

iOS 11 will have person-to-person Apple Pay: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-11-preview/

> Detect NFC tags and read messages that contain NDEF data.

Sadly it looks like this is read-only, which would eliminate companies like Clipper from implementing it?

This seems to be unidirectional -- am I reading this correctly? I'd like to be able to use my phone to authenticate to the keycard system at work (basically clone my keycard).

What I did is carefully cut my keycard down and mount the NFC device into a hole I cut in my case. The security czar heard about this and was not impressed and she disabled my card :-(

Why would she do that when it serves the same purpose? One could also argue that your method decreases loss and increases discoverability (as you'll probably be less prone to misplacing your phone and if you do, you'll notice it more quickly)

The same reason random websites have stupid password policies I suppose.

It does prevent her from getting my card back when I leave...but clearly as they can be disabled that doesn't matter.

It is really a big thing. Get a home appliance be smart with a only tap. Ntag I2C talks to mcu(home appliances), iPhone becomes the brain. cheapest and intuitive solution to build a smart appliance.LoL

Been waiting a few years for this. I wanted to start something back in 2013 which detects NFC tags for ID but had to introduce QR scanning to get around the iOS issue.

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