Tile Writes to EU Accusing Apple of Abuse of Power (bloomberg.com) 48
Bluetooth accessory maker Tile has written to the European Union accusing Apple of abuse of power and of illegally favoring its own products. From a report: According to a report by Financial Times, in a letter sent on Tuesday to the European Commissioner for Competition, the accessory maker said that Apple is making it harder for users to use Tile products on iPhone because it has its own rival Find My app. Tile asked the EU to investigate Apple's business practices, echoing previous calls made by the accessory maker in the United States. Specifically, Tile complains about changes Apple made to location services in iOS 13, which encourage customers not to use always-on location tracking. In addition, Tile said changing these options involve navigating between "complex settings not easy to find."
Eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
"... maker said that Apple is making it harder for users to use Tile products on iPhone because it has its own rival Find My app"
Find My... finds Apple devices. Tile finds anything you've attached one of their beacons to (subject to a whole bunch of limitations) so they're comparing different tech. The "always on" location tracking is the real krux of their complaint.
(Personally, I went down the Tile road and then said "eff them" when they turned them off after a year expecting the user to buy new ones.)
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean...I guess this tile company thinks that always on location tracking is a GOOD thing?
They don't seem to like privacy much, do they?
Re: Eh? (Score:2)
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Tile devices are location trackers, so that you know where your stuff is, they become useless if they don't track.
The reason they require an app with always-on tracking is that Tile devices don't have built-in GPS and rely on your phone to do that, it is an essential and completely legitimate use case. Of course competing apps made by Apple are free from these restrictions and will always track, this is the reason for the complain.
Except that . . . (Score:2)
After losing the only key to my Fleetwood just after buying it and before I found a vender for the correct blank (These are the PK-2 that GM used), I went to the Cadillac dealer. I could take the $110 to cut new keys from the numbers--but not the week to week and a half to send the blanks in from out of state!
Anyway, I got Tile keychain things, and another for my wallet (which turned upon the butter drawer, having fallen off the refrigerator two weeks earlier).
It's great to be able to set the off. In fac
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I mean...I guess this tile company thinks that always on location tracking is a GOOD thing?
In some cases it is. It sounds more like their complaint is that Apple changed a default and made it difficult to change back.
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Re:Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is working on it's own tags [pocket-lint.com] to rival other such accessories.
They've already been laying the groundwork in the OS for this. No doubt Apple's own 'tags' will not require the same permissions to be re-enabled periodically, or this hard to find in the prefs.
Re: Eh? (Score:1)
âoethey're comparing different techâ
No, I donâ(TM)t think they are. It is about tech to find stuff, it doesnâ(TM)t matter what kind of stuff. âFind myâ(TM) is for Apple devices, but as soon as Apple is introducing their own iTile and use âFind myâ(TM) as the app, they have an advantage over an other companyâ(TM)s product.
âFind myâ(TM) is installed by default and integrated with iOS. Tileâ(TM)s app is not and can not.
Apple did this before with Siri,
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Yeah, but you can't bitch about products/services that haven't been released yet, so what Apple MAY do is immaterial to the complaint to the EU.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the new Tile models have a replaceable battery, so that's moot. The bigger issue is one of coverage.
I've placed Tiles in each of my cars as a low-cost theft recovery device. As long as you swap out the battery once a year, you don't have to mess with them. The problem is that the Tile app only shows 2,414 Tile users within a radius of about ten miles from my location, and I'm living in the midtown area of a medium-sized city. That may sound like a lot of users, but over that much area I'd be lucky to ever get a "hit" if someone stole my car.
To be part of the Tile tracking network, you have to install the app on your phone and then let it constantly run in the background. Relatively few smartphone users will ever do that, which is really Tile's major drawback. I can't ever see them getting more than a small percentage of users to install their app unless Tile paid them to do it.
Apple is different. "Find My" is baked into iOS, and unless you deliberately turn off location services, it's always running in the background. So an Apple AirTag would have a huge user network ready to track my stolen car. I have to admit that I will almost certainly replace my Tile with AirTags if Apple brings them to market.
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"Most of the new Tile models have a replaceable battery, so that's moot."
Moot for you, maybe. Barn door is closed for me.
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"... maker said that Apple is making it harder for users to use Tile products on iPhone because it has its own rival Find My app"
Find My... finds Apple devices.
Up until now, yes. But Apple is about to expand "Find My..." to include its own line of little tags that you can attach to your keys, reading glasses, TV remote and other things that frequently go missing. This feature goes with a hardware upgrade to Bluetooth to a new standard that will "Find My..." to locate tags with much more precision than prior products.
Tile is basically saying "Waaah! Apple is competing with us! EU needs to impose regulations to stop that!
Conflating (Score:2)
Everyone seems to be confused. Tile competes with the Find My app by allowing you to click on the Tile and find your iPhone. It also has a webpage you can visit to try and track down your Tile (or Phone?) if it is out of range. But in order to do these things, the Tile app has to be running in the background. Apple discourages this by regularly asking if you want the Tile app running in the background. In the meantime, it never turns off the functionality that allows the Find My app to work.
Oh, and Tile sta
Tile's a what? (Score:2)
Apple Third Party Cycle (Score:4, Interesting)
Based on where the third party is at, versus where Apple's own development is at, Apple may approach the third party with an acquisition offer. Some companies sell, like the folks behind CoverFlow, others take the gable and decline, like DropBox.
The acquired get either rolled into the OS or get killed off for Apple's developed item.
The declined get a fierce platform competitor who wants to kill them.
I'm guessing Tile has been contacted by Apple plenty of times and declined. So now the hammer falls.
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But Find My... has been in iOS for at least 6 years, probably more? And it only works on Apple devices, not your car keys.
They appear to be mad not because of actual anti-Trust concerns, but because Apple is improving security and not secretly giving every app that asks for it location data. They can go suck dick, that's exactly how all of them should work.
Apple is going to release its own "Tile" (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Tile" company will die afterward if they don't have anything else to sell.
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Mark my words: Apple is going to release its own first-party "Tile" like item. It will work seamlessly with Find My with enough functionality to discourage anyone from seeking a third party solution. The "Tile" company will die afterward if they don't have anything else to sell.
They've already been working on it [pocket-lint.com], apparently.
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Find My also has to be turned on, at least it did the last time I had a friend or relative lose their phone who had not turned it on.
The real problem with Tile is that it tracks your phone to find other people's lost stuff. It's very handy, but definitely needs to be opted into. That would equally be a problem with a hypothetical Apple system, if that system did the same thing Tile does, but since Apple hasn't actually introduced such a system, or the iOS support for it, it's complete speculation.
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That would equally be a problem with a hypothetical Apple system, if that system did the same thing Tile does, but since Apple hasn't actually introduced such a system, or the iOS support for it, it's complete speculation.
Actually, Apple has done that. That's how the new Find My works.
It used to be just "Find My iPhone," and that worked by just periodically sending Apple the GPS coordinates of the iPhone. But when they changed it to be "Find My," they also updated it to be able to "find" other Apple devices, like AirPods and laptops. Neither of those have GPS in them. So how does it work? Well, iDevices (so iPhones and iPads) constantly listen for Bluetooth Low Energy "beacons" being transmitted from other Apple devices. If
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Find my iPhone has been able to locate other devices for years, via location services. For non-GPS equipped devices that means wifi geolocation.
Apple added a system last year that adds bluetooth tracking. I hadn't heard of it. It does sound like they've designed it so that it does not provide any location information to Apple or anybody else.
Possibly Apple could provide an API for that system that Tile could use. That would be quite different than Tile's complaint that Apple has encouraged users to turn off
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Apple added a system last year that adds bluetooth tracking. I hadn't heard of it. It does sound like they've designed it so that it does not provide any location information to Apple or anybody else.
So they claim. I don't see how constantly broadcasting a Bluetooth beacon prevents other people from tracking you by listening to that same beacon, but whatever.
Something I only just discovered is that if you look in Location Services, you'll see "Find My" listed and by default it's set to "Allow Only While Using." This is the permission Tile is talking about, the one that Tile requires "Always Allow" for.
But wait, how does that work, how can it find your iPhone or any other device if it only gets access to
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Tile is already opt in, which means you have to download the app and set location to "Always On". Not enough people do it to really make Tile
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The "Tile" company will die afterward if they don't have anything else to sell.
Apple's AirTags won't support Android, so Tile will be forced to draw their income from the remaining minority of the tablet/smartphone marketshare, which was a measly and dwindling 87% in 2019.
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Does Apple's "Find My" system ask the user if they want to give it permission to use location data, or does it just automatically get it?
Technically yes, effectively no. It's one of those things that when you first "set up" a new iDevice it "asks" you if you want to enable it. However, it does it in such a way that if you just blindly hit "next" through the entire thing, you enable it. You have to choose a "link" that says something like "don't set up now" if you want to prevent Find My from being enabled.
The other thing that Apple doesn't mention is that even if you do give a third party app "Always Allow" permission, iOS as of iOS 13 will
apple needs to have 3th party app stores (Score:1, Offtopic)
apple needs to have 3th party app stores
Apple's product doesn't even exist (Score:3)
I mean, not yet. But how can you file an anti-trust complaint about future products that don't exist?
"Apple's abusing their position to not sell a thing that would compete with us if it were real but isn't yet!" Huh?
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Let's say I want to turn on "Find My whatever". I flip an appropriate switch saying "Turn on 'Find My whatever'" and I'm set. No muss, no fuss, no worries.
Tile cannot implement the same thing. The user has to go through a maze of settings to turn it on. Furthermore, the user has to go back and do this again every now and then because Apple decided that maybe you really don't want this application tracking you. I don't have to do that with "Find My whatever".
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I mean, not yet. But how can you file an anti-trust complaint about future products that don't exist?
"Apple's abusing their position to not sell a thing that would compete with us if it were real but isn't yet!" Huh?
I think what they're probably trying to push for is making sure that "all accessories are treated equal" (some sort of 'accessory neutrality'?)
Essentially that if 1 manufacturer (Apple) makes a device accessory work a certain way, that other accessories that have similar/exact functionality or use be able to work that same way (not being limited, or the other manufacturer's accessory being "favored" in some way).
Whether or not Apple is within its right to "favor" its own products I guess is the point of the
hypocrites (Score:4, Insightful)
I have numerous tiles. I asked this company for their URL scheme so I could create shortcuts to simplify dealing with these in groups. They sent me a polite email saying that this information is 'private'. The URL scheme essentially facilitates communication between applications on iOS/iPadOS. They presumably implemented the scheme to allow Siri support but refuse to share it with others, essentially favoring their own app, almost exactly the scenario their complaining about.
Of course, I could pull the URL scheme out of the IPA and experiment with it but wouldn't that be exactly the sort of "complex settings not easy to find" they complained to the EU about?
Walled gardens == bad (Score:1)
And walled gardens in which the garden owner competes directly against tenant merchants is even worse.
It deserves the full anger of competition law weighing against it.
Working hard to save the business (Score:2)
The Tile CEO should be applauded for trying to save his business.
However he's full of shit and needs to STFU. The fact is, if Apple did it to screw Tile then that would be abuse. Instead, Apple's screwing everyone, which is not illegal.
The former is what Microsoft did - target specific apps for death. And they broke stuff without warning. Tile and everyone else has plenty of warning, and they have Android.
Not complaining about getting Sherlocked (Score:2)
Tile is full of crap. (Score:3)
I have a few tiles. And the app routinely nags me about its "need" to have always-on location services. Always-on is, in reality, trivial to turn on if I want it. In fact, I sure seem to have turned it on for DarkSky Weather, Citymapper, and Waze with no difficulty; since those three apps always work as desired for me.
But tile is also full of crap in a second way. I don't need full-time always-on location services in order to use my tile to find the keys which I forgot to pull out of my pants pocket before I tossed the latter into the hamper. I don't need "Only white using the app." location services for that either. Hell, even "allow once" is overkill. All it takes is bluetooth.
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You're missing the whole other side of what Tile is made for - helping other users find their lost stuff. If you leave your keys at a restauran
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That wouldn't work. Tile doesn't tell you who found your Tile, but only that it was found. So a bunch of Tiles being triggered could only tell you that someone running the Tile app was in the vicinity, not who that person was.
Of course, someone working at Tile
Tile would have a leg to stand on... (Score:3)
... if they would say publicly that they would not sell their tracking info, and would purge records of it so it could not be "requested" by governments.
Apple routinely goes out of its way to insure they won't compromise their users' privacy - the whole COVID 19 contact tracing app kerfuffle was the most recent example of that.
I trust that any object tracking service by Apple will be designed with that in mind, and that it will be transparent enough that third parties can verify that.
I don't trust Tile, do not run their app in the background with tracking on, and will probably junk my existing Tiles when Apple's tech comes on line.
Battery life (Score:2)
I also have an iPhone and witnessed how at one point a full charge got sucked dry within an hour. There are some apps for which location tracking and bluetooth is useful. There are some apps for which it is not, but they do it anyway because god forbid they have some need for a location fix when you activate them they'd better have it ready now and not after two seconds.
Even without nefarious purposes the continuous use of battery-power sucking hardware
Section 230 (Score:3)
Apple is providing a widely used service, either they purchase an executive order from Trump or they be a "neutral" provider (as determined by Trump).
While Apple does have a walled garden... (Score:1)