“An upgrade to Apple’s mobile iOS operating system due this fall will enable iPhones to use the technology underlying the Apple Pay wireless payment system for more tasks,” Barb Darrow writes for Fortune. “Users of newer iPhone models, for example, may be able to use their phones as mass transit passes, security badges, or to scan products for information about their manufacture.”
“Right now Apple’s use of NFC is limited to its three-year old Apple Pay system which lets people make cash-free transactions by holding their phone up to an NFC reader. The new operating system tweaks will open up access to the phone’s existing NFC chip to more types of applications,” Darrow writes. “Apple’s addition of what it calls ‘Core NFC’ to iOS 11 means that iPhones going forward will be able to read more types of NFC tags than those used for payments so developers can build applications that take advantage of secure NFC connectivity.”
“Igor Faletski, CEO of Mobify, a Vancouver, B.C. company that specializes in mobile apps, is excited about the possibilities,” Darrow writes. “With Core NFC, developers will be able to create and embed electronic tags in objects and then make iOS applications to use the data in those tags. ‘This is likely to enable a lot of great local applications—transit passes and productivity apps for scanning merchandise in stores and warehouses,’ he said.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The IoT bonanza looms!
As we wrote last month, “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.”
Apple’s Core NFC framework enables developers to read NFC tags in their apps on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Learn more about iOS 11’s Core NFC here.
SEE ALSO:
iOS 11 will expand iPhone’s NFC capabilities beyond Apple Pay in several ways – July 14, 2017
Apple’s iOS 11 unlocks a future for Internet of Things – July 7, 2017
Apple’s addition of NFC tags in iOS 11 is a big deal – June 9, 2017
I have never had a problem scanning barcodes with my food tracking app. Plus the barcode is already there, it’s universal.
Not sure how NFC can improve on that,
Agreed; in fact, having NFC on that many food products would be a massive waste of electronics materials, and also makes the discarded container product (paper, metal or plastic) more expensive to recycle.
A barcode, whether 2D or 3D, is a simple print pattern.
“It may be because it sees a growing threat from Android”….Bullshit
They love to toss that sort of BS around. Honestly, you’d think Apple was only competing with Android flagship smartphones. 80% of Android smartphones consumers are using are low- to mid-level smartphones which any iPhone has beat by a huge amount. If 97% of the consumers in India are buying Android smartphones, you can rest assured it’s because of the lower hardware cost and not some arcane features iPhones are lacking. It’s funny how Apple is always under threat from Android and not the other way round. I never really quite understand that way of anti-Apple thinking.
It seems iOS 11 and mac OS High Sierra are special iterations that put the pedal to the metal and pull away even more from competitors than usual. Looking forward to both, which is more that PC lovers can say about a Windows 11 or Android users who are fragmented to the point upgrades aren’t even possible. Stockholm Syndrome for those doofuses.
Which ecosystem is superior again? 😉
I can already use my iPhone and Apple Watch on London’s public transport system.