“Apple at WWDC 2017 last month introduced Core NFC, a new iOS 11 framework that enables apps to detect Near Field Communication tags,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors.
“Similar to Apple Pay, iPhone users are prompted with a ‘Ready to Scan’ dialog box,” Rossignol reports. “After holding the iPhone near an item with an NFC tag, a checkmark displays on screen if a product is detected. An app with Core NFC could then provide users with information about that product contained within the tag.”
“Core NFC will expand the iPhone’s NFC chip capabilities beyond simply Apple Pay in several other ways,” Rossignol reports. “Cybersecurity company WISeKey, for example, today announced that its CapSeal smart tag will now support iPhone thanks to Core NFC. CapSeal smart tags are primarily used for authentication, tracking, and anti-counterfeiting on products like wine bottles.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We want to be able to scan a food product via NFC tag and have our calorie-counting app record it automatically. That should work much better than scanning barcodes with the camera.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
I want my iPhone to link with my Canon camera using NFC like it can be done with Android.
Though I appreciate MDN’s idea of using NFC to scan food products and have a calorie counting app automatically record it, I would think current tech makes it impractical due to cost. Printing a bar/QR code on a food label is far less expensive than layering a passive tag under the label on any scale.
By the description given in the article it’s unclear whether after scanning, the ‘appropriate’ App that handles that type of NFC tag will be opened or if you have to open a specific App before scanning the tag when you have multiple Apps on your device that will use the NFC reader.
It’s hard to beat barcodes for direct cost, but NFC can reduce other costs such as time and labor. With NFC you could, for one example, have a shopping cart that knows what’s inside of it. Instant checkout.
I want my iPhone to be able to open my NFC door at work. Why should I need to use my tag when I have my iPhone (or even better, Apple Watch)? Apple is sometime SO glacial. This will certainly happen one day- but it will probably take another 5 years (for absolutely no good reason) and then only happen if it can be done on Android.
So sad…
In your scenario, I would think unless your iPhone was issued by and is the property of the company there would be a security problem primarily in the possibility of duplicating the tag’s authentication data.
perhaps iPhones new laser capabilities will provide SKU barcode scanning also!