Apple Adopts Bluetooth 4.0. Could It Reject NFC? 250
siliconbits writes "Two months after Apple joined the Bluetooth special interest group board, the company launched the world's first truly mainstream Bluetooth 4.0 devices, namely the new Macbook Air & Mac Mini 2011 editions. The products came only one year after the official core specifications of Bluetooth 4.0 were adopted and it looks likely that Apple fast-tracked Bluetooth 4.0's adoption so that the forthcoming iPhone 5 can use this technology with at least one Apple product. This could mean that the manufacturer is considering giving up on NFC altogether, a technology embraced by all of its rivals."
This is a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Jobs Reality Distortion Field is turned off, usually Apple is found to be selling overpriced, underspec'd hardware. But the one time they get it right, we jump on them?
Bluetooth supports cryptography. NFC does not. ... in fact, the only thing NFC seems to do better is that it takes less time to setup because (ta-da!) it has no security built into it.
Bluetooth has a higher bitrate.
Bluetooth has longer range.
The power consumption is similar
So tell me guys, given how much data is sitting on your iphone, android, blackberry, blueberry, and walla-walla-ding-dong phones, do you really want a transciever built into it that has no security capability at all... and one of its main functions is point-of-sale integration?
Sorry guys, but this time at least, Apple did good.
Bluetooth sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
What, no more iDweeb wires-into-ears look? (Score:3, Insightful)
This from a company that's been pushing wired headphones for years? Maybe Apple will finally get stereo Bluetooth support to work right.
NFC is unrelated (Score:5, Insightful)
NFC is an almost entirely unrelated technology. Granted BlueTooth and NFC share some common features, but NFC is for other things. We use it for digital payment here in Japan for example - that's something you don't want going over BlueTooth. NFC is also good for various physical hot-spot applications. NFC also allows for physical queuing - something some fast food restaurants use for example. BlueTooth on the other-hand handles headsets and other peripherals, as well as a variety of inter-device communications. My phone has both BlueTooth and NFC, as do most phones here in Japan. To have both makes perfect sense.
they do this all the time, and it works for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple isn't known for giving a crap what their competition is embracing. (that's MS's gig) I think the basic ideas is "why have a feature that everyone else has, giving the consumer a choice between our product and a dozen competitors, when we can offer an appealing feature that we have a large portion of the market on"?
Makes perfect sense really. Hype something that you, and everyone else, is offering, or hype something that they can only buy from you? That's just smart business.
Now of course this relies on the market adopting it if it's a compatibility thing, but then if you've already established yourself as the representative for the feature, you've accomplished your goal and it's ok for the competition to run up into the back of the pack with support too and their support for "your feature" just works to your advantage then.
Do they even fill the same role? (Score:4, Insightful)
After a quick glance at NFC, it seems like Bluetooth and NFC don't even fulfill the same roles. NFC only has a working range of 20cm or less, while Bluetooth can reach for something like 20-30 meters (in extreme cases). That seems like it would make NFC useless for headsets, as a phone in the pocket is going to be more than 20cm away from your ear. Same thing for laptops. Also, NFC has an extremely low data rate compared to Bluetooth, so your not going to use it for file transfers. Seems like NFC is mostly useful for things like credit cards/ID badges/ etc. which Bluetooth would be useless for, since it needs pairing, while Bluetooth is used for voice/video communication, file transfers, and the like.
Am I wrong about this? Anyone know more about NFC compared to Bluetooth? I do see that Bluetooth 4.0 is low energy, so it could fill some of the roles of NFC, but it can't do passive RFID like NFC can, so again, different technologies for different uses. Seems like the story (at least the summary) is just sensationalist speculation. Seems like not using NFC would be quite stupid on Apple's part in any case, since nearly everyone else is. Having the iPhone/ MacBook not work with actually deployed technology seems like it would be a huge mistake for Apple.
Re:False logic (Score:2, Insightful)
I never understood why Apple fans brag that "their" company makes the highest profit off of them.