

Ink (YC S12) Releases New iOS Layer That Allows Apps to Interact, Share Data - betojuareziii
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/15/inks-new-mobile-framework-lets-ios-apps-talk-to-each-other-share-data-you-know-like-on-android/

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khangtoh
I'm struggling to see what is the difference between the native iOS UIActivity
vs Ink.

[http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/r...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIActivity_Class/Reference/Reference.html)

I thought that's what UIActivity does and many applications are already using
this particular feature to share photos between apps.

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brettcvz
The primary difference is that Ink allows for applications to register new
actions across applications, and to launch content directly into other
applications as well. Think of Ink as a cross-application version of
UIActivity that's open to anyone registering handlers, as opposed to only
being able to use the UIActivity's of your own app or the system provided
ones.

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nakedrobot2
I wonder if Apple will approve this, as it seems to allow the iPhone to do
something that Apple doesn't want it to do?

If Apple wanted apps to talk to each other in the (IMO very sensible) way that
Android does, wouldn't they have done so?

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brettcvz
We've been working with apple since WWDC, they know what we're doing and are
fine with it.

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batgaijin
Are you afraid they are using you for market verification?

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brettcvz
Not particularly. In a sense larger, established companies are always looking
at startups for market verification; the startups that succeed are the ones
that can out-pace the established companies.

In addition, there are market dynamics that preclude any of the larger players
truly building a platform for interoperability. See for example the recent
Google/Microsoft turf wars, that Mailbox only supports attachments from
Dropbox, iOS native composer only works with Mail and not gmail, etc.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I'm curious how the inter-device communication will work. Will I be able to
send data from my iPad to my Android phone, for example? That would be pretty
slick if so.

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rdl
Is this secure enough that a local password manager (like 1Password) could
responsibly use it to pass credentials into apps?

~~~
brettcvz
The current release candidate (v0.4.0 -
[https://github.com/Ink/InkiOSFramework](https://github.com/Ink/InkiOSFramework))
does not do end-to-end encryption between apps, so we would want to work with
them to add in AES256 at a minimum before I'd recommend sending over
passwords.

It's both technologically possible to make this secure enough and on our
roadmap for the next major release.

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somid3
The article brings up a great point. This tool is so esencial I wonder why is
it that Apple and Android have not made this natively much simpler. Seems like
a great venture to be a part of.

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myko
> Android have not made this natively much simpler.

This is already amazingly simple on Android natively though. This is an
attempt to make it similarly simple on iOS.

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brettcvz
Intents has done a great job on android - I have some minor quibbles with it,
but it's light years ahead of what iOS had pre-Ink

Edit since I can't reply to milesokeefe: As an avid android user (Galaxy
Nexus), some things about intents that I feel are poorly designed: \- No
support for bidirectionality. There's no sense of "I'm done with this action,
take the results and send it back" \- No sense of intelligence in terms of
what actions are shown. As far as I can tell, it seems to be filtered by
content type, sorted by Most Recently Used. \- Unclear actions - iOS suffers
the same issue, where it's not really clear what it means to open in another
application.

~~~
myko
> No support for bidirectionality. There's no sense of "I'm done with this
> action, take the results and send it back" -

Doesn't startActivityForResult fit this use case?

> No sense of intelligence in terms of what actions are shown.

I agree here, it can be annoying to pair down the list of applications which
will handle an intent. If one wants specific applications one can use the
package manager to check its existence and then use that.

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biafra
You can also reduce the list before presenting it to the user.

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phil
A short description of how it works would probably go a long way for developer
adoption. There doesn't seem to be any.

The most obvious way to implement this might not work the same in iOS 7 -- I'd
want to know more before relying on it.

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brettcvz
Re. how it works behind the scenes, we do a streaming protocol over
UIPasteboard, with actions being cached locally and periodically updated from
the servers when connection is available. At least for now - we will continue
to iterate on the underlying tech to make it faster/more reliable/more secure.

Re. iOS7, it required being a bit more clever, but Ink works with iOS7.

Give it a try, let us know what you think.

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rsynnott
I wonder is this going via the internet anyway, or just using the pasteboard
thing.

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brettcvz
We do the data transfer locally on the device. We had an early prototype that
did things over the web, but it was too slow and was frustrating to use on 3G.

Edit for clarification: the transfer occurs locally and works while offline.

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rsynnott
Locally would certainly be preferable (especially for iPads, where the user
may not even have an internet connection).

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mikeash
And let's not forget that even iPhones can be away from cellular coverage.

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brettcvz
Our announcement at [http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/58338915828/announcing-
the-...](http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/58338915828/announcing-the-ink-
mobile-framework)

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The_D
Can't you just use IPC and basic file I/O, rather than tech bubble 2.0?

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zefi
Amazing job, excited to see where this goes.

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workbench
Isn't this Apples job?

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AsymetricCom
I have a feeling it will be.

