
Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags - ronwen
https://developer.ibm.com/dwblog/2017/nfc-ios-reading-nfc-tags/
======
ponco
If anyone's wondering, the API is significantly more limited than the Android
NFC API (which having used it extensively over the last 2 years I can say is
very pleasant).

Still, it's better than nothing and it represents a huge opportunity for NFC
tag providers (where I work). We've been waiting for this for about 4 years.

~~~
Hippocrates1
looking at the documentation, I'm not able to see if the API allows for even
read/write of direct links. Is that the case?

~~~
ponco
There is no support for writing direct links as you say, but if the data is a
standard NDEF URI then I believe the NFCReaderSession will return the
NDEFMessage objects (code example
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44415442/nfc-tags-not-
de...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44415442/nfc-tags-not-detected-
corenfc))

------
givinguflac
Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as
excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've
used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but
it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing
here?

~~~
giobox
It reminds me of the ridiculous excitement over iBeacons when Apple announced
their proprietary NFC-like tech a few years ago. Virtually every iOS dev I
know bought some cheap iBeacons thinking "wow this is so cool" and never ended
up building anything useful. I wasn't immune either, as the abandoned iBeacon
in my desk drawer attests to.

There's undoubtedly great use cases for NFC on phones (payments, travel
passes, hotel room keys etc), but it's also a technology that often seems to
attract developers solely because it seems 'cool', not because they have a
problem that can be solved better with NFC than without it.

~~~
pfranz
A lot of the coolness requires a critical mass. The idea is usually being a
standard, being Apple supported, or being included in Android provides
that...in practice, that hasn't been true.

I look enviously at other countries that have been using feature phones for
banking and p2p banking. The video of a guy in China assembling his own iPhone
shows QR codes at each booth used for payment. There's no reason Smart Phones
or NFC could do those things better, but we still don't have it and it won't
be happening in the U.S. in near future.

~~~
janekm
Actually, interestingly, QR codes can be better for some payment scenarios
than NFC. I live in China and I can go to my local corner shop, pick up a
bottle from the fridge, and even if there's a queue at the register I can scan
the code from a distance, pay and leave with a nod from the shop keeper.

QR codes are also used for exchanging contact information... when I give a
talk in China, I put my Wechat QR code at the end so any member of the
audience can scan it from the slide for follow-up conversations.

~~~
gumby
> I put my Wechat QR code at the end so any member of the audience can scan it
> from the slide

I've always been surprised by this (and even more by QR codes in magazine ads
and billboards). I'd think that these days, for 90% of applications a regular
URL should work. Just as your photo app thee days marks (and often labels) the
faces, it could simply highlight all the URLs, email addresses etc in the
image and let you click on them.

Yes, QR codes are more robust (at the cost of a small payload for a large
image) but I suspect in most cases it's unnecessary.

~~~
janekm
QR Codes do work rather well actually in different contexts, they are very
robust. Upside down, from across the room, weird lighting... Also, in the
Chinese context, everybody knows what to do with it and what to expect to
happen if they scan it.

The farmer coming into the city on a trike selling fruit even accepts payment
by QR code :)

------
Kipters
At first I was excited, but then I read the docs:

> Read only

> Only supports NDEF formatted tags

> Available only on iPhone 7 and newer

Basically, this is even more crippled than what WP 8.0 did five years ago (and
back then I thought it was too crippled to be useful)

~~~
0x0
I wonder if there is any technical reason for requiring iPhone 7. I thought
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s also had some kind of NFC hardware present to support
Apple Pay.

~~~
adambrenecki
IIRC, because the payment terminals have their own power source, previous
iPhone generations lacked the induction coils necessary to support passive NFC
tags. Presumably they were added to the iPhone 7?

~~~
MBCook
It could also be some kind of security thing where the 7 was designed to be
able to have 3rd party access where the 6/6s would have required the secure
enclave to do something risky.

Pure guess.

~~~
ClassyJacket
Well, the Secure Enclave is in every device with a TouchID, so that's the
iPhone 5S and newer.

~~~
MBCook
Right but I mean that perhaps in the iPhone 7 they somehow rejiggered the SE
interface in anticipation of doing this. That way the 7 hardware has a very
secure way to do this where as since it wasn't planned in the older phones it
might not be secure if they tried to provide access from user software. Maybe
the NFC reader is attached to a different chip in the 7 that makes this
easier/secure than in the older phones.

------
curryhowardiso
This is potentially huge news - given that Apple just fought (and won) an
antitrust/anti competition lawsuit in Australia in respect of not allowing
Australian banks to use this NFC API!

[http://registers.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1197...](http://registers.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1197444/fromItemId/401858)

Edit: pulled the trigger on this comment too soon - it appears that the API
will only support "reader mode" which is not what the main subject of the
litigation was about - the banks wanted a 'total' (for want of a better word)
public access API.

------
flax
Wonderful. Now, how many more years before they get write access? The "C" is
for "communication".

~~~
abritinthebay
technically communication _can_ be one way.

------
xor1
Started looking at the author's patents out of curiosity.

[http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.html&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=IN%2FLisa+and+Seacat%0D%0A&d=PG01)

A computer receives user preferences. The computer receives a document,
wherein the document includes an image. The computer determines that the image
contains embedded text. The computer determines that the embedded text does
not satisfy the received user preferences. The computer modifies the embedded
text to satisfy user preferences.

Is this stuff actually enforceable? As in, could I, with adequate legal
sources, actually get companies and individuals to pay me money for something
as generic as "Text resizing within an embedded image", without actually
implementing it (whether it be stand-alone code or within some sort of
application)? Is Apple shelling out cash to IBM for the privilege of
autoresizing labels?

~~~
xorcist
Welcome to Marshall, Texas!

~~~
xor1
Ugh. Is the author basically a professional patent troll?

~~~
xorcist
Sorry about that. I wouldn't want anyone to think that. It was just my idea of
a joke.

------
abalone
I can't tell from the docs.. Does it actually allow your app to wake up in
response to scanning tags? Or does it merely allow your active app to fire up
the NFC reader?

------
dep_b
Some example code: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44380305/ios-11-core-
nfc...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44380305/ios-11-core-nfc-any-
sample-code)

------
dogecoinbase
Oh nice. Need to test if it will support NFC-based Yubikeys.

------
martinald
Is this comparable to NFC support on Android or is it a more limited subset?
Can it do equivalent ISO 14443?

~~~
jayd16
Looks like its only read support.

------
wastedhours
This opens up quite a few interesting ideas in the real world gaming arena. I
know it's been possible with Android, but cross platform real world treasure
hunt games are something I've thought a lot about, and this could make it
easier than having to do GPS bounding or use BLE.

------
wnevets
users in the year 2011 will be so happy

------
dingo_bat
That's not the NFC party most people are attending. For me the most common use
of NFC is to automatically pair/turn on my headphones and my portable speaker.

------
BillinghamJ
Is there some kind of example app I can sideload onto my iPhone which will
just detect and scan any/all NFC tags and display the data to me?

------
sigspec
We had an instance where we needed to read NFC tags and had to use a third
party sled. This would have helped a ton.

------
johansch
These guys have done some initial research on what exactly this entails:

[https://gototags.com/blog/apple-ios-11-supports-reading-
nfc-...](https://gototags.com/blog/apple-ios-11-supports-reading-nfc-tags-
iphone-7-iphone-8-core-nfc/)

------
Fej
What took so long?

~~~
astrodust
Standards, plus thinking Low-Power BlueTooth might supplant it.

~~~
spilk
And probably paranoia that it would interfere with Apple Pay

~~~
djrogers
Apple Pay uses NFC - how would it interfere?

~~~
giobox
I suspect spilk is referring to concerns Apple will probably have had
internally about rival payment platforms using the iPhone NFC hardware to
process payments instead of Apple Pay. I'd be extremely surprised if debates
about this didn't come up when they were deciding how to build the public API
for the feature, and is probably a huge factor in the API being read only and
not supporting card emulation, for now.

------
Analemma_
This is awesome! But why am I hearing about it from IBM instead of Apple?

~~~
dang
It did come up yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14491686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14491686).
One downside of the annual announcement-day extravaganzas the big tech cos all
do is that there is only enough space on HN's front page for the 3 or 4
biggest announcements, at most. Even then a lot of users get irritated by how
much Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever is appearing on conference day.

