What Apple’s ‘background tag reading’ NFC update means

“Apple showed off many new features of the new iPhone during its ‘Gather round’ event earlier this month, but there’s one major update that didn’t make it to the main stage,” Dieter Holger writes for Macworld. “It was an update to the iPhone’s NFC (near field communication) support, the tech that lets you scan your iPhone to checkout through Apple Pay.”

Holger writes, “With the new NFC implementation, as long as an iPhone XS or XR is within 1.6-inches of an NFC tag, it displays a notification you can tap to open an app or link in Safari.”

“Connected things are essentially digital experiences found in everyday objects. For example, a tag on a movie poster could open up a trailer when you scan it with your iPhone,” Holger writes. “You could scan packaging on furniture or appliances to open step-by-step directions via text or even a video. Tags in grocery stores could also give you dietary information about what’s on the shelves.”

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Immediately, security springs to mind, but, according to the article, it doesn’t seem to be much of an issue.

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