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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

From the Google cache of their site, they claim their product works with any ANT+ compatible sensor. ANT is the same wireless protocol used by the Nike+ sensor. There aren't any public APIs in the iPhone SDK to access the iOS devices built-in ANT receiver so my guess is they are using undocumented APIs possibly to gather data from these bike sensors which Apple would presumably have a problem with.

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ANT+ is not the same as ANT.

Apart from that, you may be correct unless the bastards are doing a C&D on "grounds" of their frivolous bike stuff patent application.

Edit: paragraph.

ANT+ is built on top of ANT if I've read the documentation correctly.

ANT is not a single standard as such. Manufacturers had their own incompatible versions of ANT.

ANT+ on the other hand is a standard so that any ANT+ capable devices will be able to communicate with eachother. I assume there is some intellectual heritage, but the two are distinct.

But why would they have to take down their website? That would be an issue in their app, not in the website itself.

Don't want to advertise something that might not be able to exist in it's current form, who knows. When you enter the legal realm people act in strange ways.

Because it's a good publicity stunt?

I certainly hadn't heard of them before this.

Nor had I, and now I want it. That's a job well done, marketing-wise.

I thought their product used a hardware cradle that contained the ANT receiver and presumably communicated over the dock connector, so that they wouldn't have had to use any built-in receivers.

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