Why would Apple be involved here? Wouldn't this just be a regular application, just like any other?
Or is this yet another case of Apple's APIs being too limited, so they made themselves yet another loophole rather than fix it?
Or is this yet another case of Apple's APIs being too limited, so they made themselves yet another loophole rather than fix it?
The problem was it didn't reliably open doors, which is really the only thing you want from an access control system.
Apparently at the time NFC was for Apple Pay only, so the vendor had to use bluetooth; and apparently there was no way for them to keep their app running and the bluetooth radio running all the time. The Android version was no better.
Within a year they had switched back to plastic ID cards.
There is no API to send raw APDUs to a card or simulate a card (receiving APDUs from the reader). This makes it a non-starter for implementing any kind of smart card (such as receiving a challenge from a reader, signing it with a private key stored in the app - potentially delegated to the secure element - and returning it).
The APIs they provide only allow reading static values off "NFC Forum" tags which is useless for any kind of security or access control.
Still can't create payment apps though. No idea if this would be sufficient for an access control system.
It's also PR.