I’m not sure a parallel can be drawn to the Find My network. That one is purely designed for location tracking in an anonymous way, and does not have the ability to transfer data between devices or any other type of tracking.
You can get a sense of the protocol here.
- If their hardware only connects to Find My, then the Tile network (and Android phones specifically) will have fewer connection points available, making the devices less attractive to Android users who will not have access to Find My.
- If their hardware only connects to the Tile network, then their tracker hardware is less attractive to iOS users, who have the larger Find My network available.
If Tile is able to ship hardware (or adapt their existing hardware) to connect to both networks by default, this sidesteps the issue entirely, since it'll work both with cross-platform hardware and take advantage of the first-party tracking network. And the ability to do so by default is hugely important here: putting something behind a toggle will effectively kill its adoption, and will have knock-on network effects.
They want iOS users to download the Tile app instead of using the native Find My. If they don’t, coverage will be severely degraded for Android users as you mention.
The hardware is just a dumb emitter. Fixing this would require either:
1. The Find My api to be available on Android, so phones can track and locate tags
2. Find My on iOS uploads tag data to a third party service of the users’ choice
The latter is absolutely unlikely as it exposes user data defeating all of the privacy guarantees Apple developed. #1 is more likely but still a long shot.
We always criticism big companies for their market position. Where is the line drawn between big enough to be successful but not big enough to be unfair player using existing business to leapfrog into other areas?
It seems we are quick to point a finger but its never qualified. We just think "x is big, x is doing y, x is being unfair."
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...
Anything of that sort would be a completely new, unrelated system.
Once these systems are accepted they often get upgraded without significant reconsideration.