No need, since they're only doing this after (again) being forced by EU regulations, https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/25/apple-pay-nfc-europe-alternat..., so no extra credit handed out :)
Curious to hear what people who usually think EU regulations hinders innovation thinks of this move, since it seems like regulation actually promoted innovation in this case. Just a edge-case or perhaps something more?
> those official solutions require manual approval, incur additional (in some cases absolutely cuckoo $$$) fees
In the EU, there is HCE, under less restrictive terms but geographically isolated.
Imagine a world in which Apple would let people just... use the expensive devices they already paid good money for! (Yeah, I can't either.)
But all of that is still gated behind a ton of requirements, most importantly a required third-party lab certification [1]. I haven't found anything regarding pricing (but I'd be willing to bet it still doesn't come cheap), but even just the public requirements make this a no-go for hobbyist projects, unlike Android's HCE.
You'd think that it was common sense to avoid that, but we are talking about the company that invented DRM for the USB protocol...
I'm aware of this myself, because I work in games, and sometimes we literally can't comment on things; which leads to the speculation being very often the absolute most negative possible interpretation of what is happening, and completely invalid.
To take another more obvious example; imagine OpenBSD was, well, not open. Yet they didn't support Bluetooth. (they don't).
From and outside perspective, is this: because they don't consider it open source? Because they're not capable? Because they hate bluetooth headphones or interfacing with audio devices? Is it due to security- maybe related to file sharing or something... it could be privacy.
And if we thought they were just pure-through-and-through bastards, we'd think up more.
There's another perspective, ironically that covers your point as well as OpenBSD's lack of bluetooth support:
What if; it's actually much harder than we realise to make it easy to use and secure?
It's totally possible that a standardised format has only hacky, rushed and dangerous implementations. It's not uncommon at all, actually.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2008/07/15/transit-card-maker-...
If the company wants people to have positive thoughts, they should do positive things! If indeed there are positive reasons for an apparently negative thing, they should explain them.
If they can't or won't explain them, then people absolutely should assume if they feel like they're getting screwed, that they probably are.
This is I think the crux of so many modern philosophical problems. Is it possible for a corporation to do the right things and thrive? Arizona Iced Tea could be an example of this I suppose.
Do mega corporations and does Apple actually want people to think positive thoughts about them? We as consumers certainly want them to want that. But I have yet to see evidence of corporations caring about that.
Do consumers at all care about how unethical a corporation is (to the first approximation; there are always protest. Remember when Budweiser went out of business? Or Harley?)? If not, this whole thing is moot.
This happens everywhere, it's not a problem exclusive to games. It's a problem fundamental to trust - when you stop communicating with your audience, what do they assume from your behavior? Gamedevs feel this pressure as a consequence of releases like Duke Nukem Forever and No Man's Sky that promised the world and came out with nothing. Apple feels this scrutiny for the same reason - the quality of software they make is markedly worse than what they put out 15 or 25 years ago. We have to hold them accountable, Apple's silence is an unacceptable response to the rift they've created with the software standards community.
Apple has plenty of unexplained fees and double-standards, as developers we've learned better than to ask why. There is no reason Apple makes me pay $99 per year to improve their platform - they have no justification to arbitrarily deny third-party payment processing. The obvious reason, on the surface, is that offering another business the same full-fat feature access that you have threatens the service you intend to sell.
When Apple creates institutions like the App Store, iMessage and Apple Pay, they are implicitly asking themselves how they will treat their competitors. When they design these institutions around features with no third-party parity, they are creating unfair businesses and sustaining them on a policy of secrecy. We are not stupid people, we can surmise why Apple cares about service revenue by looking at their quarterly financials.
> What if; it's actually much harder than we realise to make it easy to use and secure?
So what? HTTPS is hard to secure, but Apple's not going to stop supporting that over some unnamed ideological protest. NFC and USB are comparatively simple, and you can implement every feature that Apple uses without resorting to DRM or middleware. The only tangible explanation comes in the form of licensing fees for MFi and Apple-branded serial connectors. It's about control and money, two perfectly acceptable explanations for a business as greed-oriented as Apple.
You have to be arguing in entirely bad faith to look at the rest of the technology market and assert that it's the standards forum's fault for not responding to issues that Apple won't even confirm they have in the first place. Not only is that one hell of a baseless assumption, it's an apologia based on a source that doesn't exist. Faith is not a virtue, in the business world.
Now, corporations are always greed driven to some extent but the problem is the sole focus on that and the duplicity around the subject from Apple "fans".
Modern Apple is so greedy that it makes the Bill Gates era look like child's play. It's not surprising, Bill Gates was an effeminate duplicitous man and Tim Cook is the turbocharged version of that.
No, it's really just Apple being paranoid/greedy about their platform. Android has had HCE for over a decade now.
That said, in my view Apple has every right to, on top of HCE, offer access to their secure element at restrictive terms: Even though Java Card has a "firewall" between installed applications, these things aren't really battle-tested to run completely untrusted and potentially hostile applications side by side with e.g. payment card applications.
But HCE and SE implementations can coexist! Android has, again, been doing it for over a decade!
And Apple even has implemented both HCE and SE – but HCE is EU only (if you're quiet, you can still hear Apple stomping their feet in the distance), whereas SE is "some non-EU countries" only, and requires paying (at least according to TFA) exorbitant fees.
If they didn't outwardly support Bluetooth, but a group of the OpenBSD devs had a side project to support it, and also that side project was deployed on a billion devices around the world and makes those devs millions of dollars every week...then yes, people would definitely accuse them of having motivations that were less than pure.
It’s easy to say that it’s not Apple’s problem if people use horrifically insecure RFID and NFC access systems. But I doubt the media, or the lawyers for any office block, would see it that way. The headlines basically write themselves “iPhone used to hack into secure government facilities” or something silly like that. Just look at the uproar the Flipper Zero created in Canada[1]. Now imagine if you could do that with an iPhone (which has most of the hardware needed) by simply downloading an app. Not a chance in hell Apple is gonna let their products be used like that (heck the AirTag stalking debacle demonstrates how silly the reaction can be when there’s an opportunity to roast Apple over an open flame).
It would be great if all this stuff was open but the reality of the situation is that RFID and NFC standards are trash, and even when there is a secure “standard” (I’ve yet to see any evidence that manufacturers actually aim for any kind of cross compatibility, even when following a standard), access control manufacturers haven’t bothered using them.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/02/canada-vows-to-ban-...
iPhone users should be able to do that if they have any semblance of control over the hardware they bought. If MacOS supports SDR without any issues, and Apple's own implementation of NFC is good enough, I think this is a silly argument. Enabling NFC access does not turn an iPhone into a Flipper Zero any more than it does with Android, the argument is moot.
If the best reason we can muster is "it would make Apple look bad" then we might as well have put the Magic Keyboard and USB-A/HDMI ports in the garbage and withdraw Apple from the EU economic zone. Apple is perfectly capable of adapting to changes that do not align with their insular and stubborn worldview. Some would even say these changes improve their products.
Android devices use the same chips, and any access card that can be trivially cloned by any device, consumer or otherwise, doesn't deserve to be called that.
> It would be great if all this stuff was open but the reality of the situation is that RFID and NFC standards are trash
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. What's broken isn't the entire ISO 14443 stack, but rather some legacy implementations. This is like saying "TLS is trash", because some old versions supported RC4 and DES 56 bit at some point.
> Just look at the uproar the Flipper Zero created in Canada
People create uproars about things they don't understand every day.
This attitude is exactly why we (hobbyists, security researchers etc.) can’t have nice things, and of course actual criminals still can.
You’re thinking about reality. Unfortunately, perception makes the world go round.
They didn't just consider it, that's what happened and was their plan. Not until EU regulations were on their radar did they actually start considering opening up the NFC APIs for others to implement.