NFC is the way of the future

▼ NFC is an amazing technology. Mark my words: it's going to be huge. Whether Apple adopts it next week or not. The reason: it ties together the physical world with the networked world. When scanning for Wi-Fi networks or bluetooth devices, it's really hard to know which names on your screen map to which devices in the real world. So Wi-Fi requires typing long and complex network passwords and bluetooth uses an annoying pairing procedure. NFC, on the other hand, really is plug and play. Without the "plug" part.

NFC (near field communication) is based on RFID (radio frequency identification). The simplest RFID chips only hold a serial number. More advanced ones can do some processing and store a little information. The interesting thing is that they don't have batteries. Instead, RFID readers emit an electromagnetic field that transfers enough power to the chip to wake it up and have it talk to the reader. RFID chips easily fit inside a credit card or even a paper transit ticket and they cost as little as a few cents. NFC is an extension to RFID that allows communication between more powerful devices, such as cell phones.

So what's the big deal, can't you do the same thing with barcodes or QR codes or magnetic stripes?

This is true for simple RFID chips, which provide nothing more than a serial number that anyone with an RFID reader can read. Presumably, copying such an RFID chip is also easy, just like copying a barcode or magstripe is trivial. But more advanced RFID chips have on-board authentication mechanisms, and will only talk to authenticated readers.

In the short term, the killer app for NFC is going to be payment systems. I've been reading a lot on American websites on how such a system won't go anywhere, because it doesn't provide any merchant or consumer benefits.

I don't agree. A payment system that uses NFC-equipped cellphones can be simultaneously easier to use and more secure. The chip+PIN system that's now used in Europe is also quite safe, because all the sensitive data is stored inside the chip and can't easily be copied. However, inserting the card and typing the PIN is still a bit of a hassle and it's still possible for the PIN to be intercepted so the card can be charged if it's stolen or the magstripe is copied.

Here in the Netherlands, two of the three large banks are now rolling out debit cards with an RFID chip to allow contactless payments. This seems less secure at first blush because in theory, someone could read (and charge) the card while it's in your pocket. However, RFID/NFC only works over very short distances (less than 10 cm) and online authorization from the bank is required, so in practice this is not going to be a fruitful attack vector. Interestingly, small payments can be made without entering a PIN. Only for payments over 25 euros (or once small payments add up to 50 euros) the PIN must be entered. So paying small amounts with a contactless card will be much faster and more convenient than with a regular card.

But how does the addition of a phone make any of this better?

I'm glad you ask. There are actually RFID stickers that you can stick on your phone so you can "use your phone" for contactless payments. However, if Apple adds NFC to the iPhone 6, this means that rather than entering your PIN on a terminal—which may or may not be outfitted with a PIN spying camera—you could enter the PIN on your iPhone. Or better yet, use the touch ID sensor. I imagine that for small amounts, simply having the phone unlocked would be sufficient. For larger payments, you would have to authenticate using the fingerprint sensor.

I also think that this is will be the extent of Apple's involvement in the payment process.¹ Sure, Apple has hundreds of millions of credit card numbers on file. But being a payment processor entails a lot of customer service and surprisingly thin margins, so i'd be very surprised if Apple had any interest in that business. However, the card issuers are going to love the strong fingerprint authentication, which will surely reduce fraud. This will give Apple significant leverage for negotiating better rates for iTunes / app store credit card payments. Remember that Apple sells more than half of its iPhones outside North America, so even if none of this materializes in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean the whole thing was a failure. In fact, there is some speculation that NFC payments may be a must-have feature in some regions.

Of course all of this is just the camel's nose. Once tens of millions of popular devices have NFC capability, and that capability can be used in third-party apps using APIs (we can only hope!), it won't be long before new and innovative uses of NFC will develop. Remember the bump app for exchanging business cards by bumping phones together? With NFC this would be much easier. There are already bluetooth devices that can be paired through NFC. There are RFID stickers you can scan with an NFC phone to change the phone's settings quickly. Setting up a Wi-Fi network, unlocking a computer (or your front door!) without a password, charging up your Oyster card or OV-chipkaart—or replacing that card. I'm sure tying the networked world and the physical world together quickly, easily and securely will lead to lots of innovations that we haven't even thought of.

¹ I wonder how the connection between a bank account or credit card an the iPhone will be made, though.

Permalink - posted 2014-09-07

Technology from the pre-iPhone days

▼ Yesterday I posted this to Twitter:

Kicking it old school while my iPhone 5 is undergoing battery surgery.

And then this morning I saw Andy Ihnatko had a video based on a similar photo, where he extolled the virtues of the 20-year-old versions of the technologies now bundled inside an iPhone: Why 2013 Won't Be Like 1993. (Part of his effort to decide once and for all whether doing video is for him by doing three a week for a month—recommended.)

And yes, the old stuff does have some advantages. As someone on Twitter mentioned: "i wish you a happy week with no need for recharging :-)" It's true, the Nokia 6310i from 2002 easily lasts a week on a charge. However, I think if you only use your iPhone for making a short phonecall a few times a week, it also lasts for many days... And the dead tree book doesn't need any power at all!

When I brought in my iPhone 5 at the Apple Store yesterday, they first tried to repair it in the store, but when I came back later they told me the repair was unsuccessful so they had to send the phone away, and it may be as much as two weeks before I get it back. They did give me a loaner 16 GB iPhone 5, though. Not easy to get everything into 16 GB (well, just over 12, really) when 32 GB (= just under 28) was already cramped before.

Permalink - posted 2014-09-02

iPhone lock screen tip: audio controls vs large clock, timer

▼ After six years of using one, it's not often that I stumble upon an iPhone trick I didn't know before. But here's one. When looking at the lock screen when audio is playing, press the home button and the audio controls are replaced with the large clock that the lock screen normally shows when no audio is playing.

This is the lock screen when playing music:

The time can be hard to make out on this screen when on the move. So press the home button and voilà:

But it gets better. A while ago I noticed that if you have a timer running, the lock screen will show you the timer. Unfortunately, not when playing back audio. Again, pressing the home button fixes this:

Not a big thing, but very useful!

Permalink - posted 2014-08-27

Existing and upcoming iOS device screens and the metric system

▼ Have you ever noticed how the iPad has strange screen sizes? 9.7 and 7.9 inches. The same for the rumored new iPhone sizes: 4.7 and 5.5 inches. Turns out some of these screen sizes are nice, round numbers... in the metric system.

First a short metric system refresher for my American readers. It all begins with the meter (m). Long distances are measured in kilometers (1 km = 1000 m). Short distances are measured in centimeters (100 cm = 1 m) or millimeters (1000 mm = 1 m, 10 mm = 1 cm). A liter (l) is a volume the size of 10 by 10 by 10 cm, and a liter worth of water weighs 1000 grams, or a kilogram (kg, also just "kilo" in common parlance). The main thing you have to remember is that an inch is 2.54 cm or 25.4 mm.

Interestingly, on its English language web pages, Apple dutifully lists all the outward dimensions of the iPad Air both in inches/pounds and (tens of!) millimeters and grams. In other languages, only millimeters/grams are mentioned. Except for the screen. That's 9.7 inches, period. Even in French. The same thing for the iPad mini with its 7.9" screen.

Let's do some calculations:

	Screen diagonal
iPhone 4	3.5" x 2.54 =	8.89 cm
iPhone 5	4" x 2.54 =	10.16 cm
iPad Air	9.7" x 2.54 =	24.64 cm
iPad mini	7.9" x 2.54 =	20.07 cm
iPhone 6 small	4.7" x 2.54 =	11.94 cm
iPhone 6 big	5.5" x 2.54 =	13.97 cm

Not so round. However, if we also take into consideration the pixel resolution and pixels per inch numbers that Apple publishes, things look slightly different:

	Resolution	PPI	Screen in	D in	px/cm	Screen cm	D cm
iPhone 4	960x640	326	2.95x1.96	3.54	128	7.5x5	9
iPhone 5	1136x640	326	3.48x1.96	4	128	8.88x5	10.19
iPad Air	2048x1536	264	7.76x5.82	9.69	104	19.69x14.77	24.62
iPad mini	2048x1536	326	6.28x4.71	7.85	128	16 x 12	20

(Screen in / Screen cm: screen height x width in inches / cm. D = screen diagonal.)

Conclusion: the iPhone and iPad mini use a pixel density that makes for nice round numbers for the display size in the metric system, with the original iPad being the odd man out. So what about the rumored 4.7" and 5.5" sizes for the iPhone 6? That would be 11.938 and 13.97 cm, respectively. Which probably means it's going to be 12 and 14 cm, or 4.72" and 5.51".

John Gruber's conjecture lands at 750 x 1334 for the small one. If that one has a 12 cm screen at 326 PPI = 128 pixels/cm, that comes out to:

	Resolution	PPI	Screen in	D in	px/cm	Screen cm	D cm
iPhone 6 small	1336 x 752 *	326	4.11x2.31	4.72	128	10.46x5.88	12

Note that this is different from the 1366 x 768 result I got last week. I then used 10 cm for the iPhone 5 screen size, and assumed 4" → 4.7" actually meant 10 → 12 cm, a 20% increase. But the iPhone 5 screen is actually 10.2 cm, so a 20% increase in size would be 10.2 → 12.24 cm, which is 4.82" and not in the 4.65" - 4.74" range that would be rounded to 4.7". I think if Apple had wanted to stick with 326 PPI / 128 pixels/cm, they'd have gone for the extra 2.4 mm diagonal screen size, which only adds only 1.2 mm to the width of the screen but makes the pixel numbers work out much better.

I still think 1280 x 720 is the most likely resolution for a 12 cm iPhone 6, because it's a nice round number and allows for slightly bigger text for unupdated applications while still providing a reasonable number of extra pixels. Assuming the 14 cm version would use the same pixel density, that comes out to:

	Resolution	PPI	Screen in	D in	px/cm	Screen cm	D cm
iPhone 6 small	1280x720	311	4.11x2.31	4.72	122	10.46x5.88	12
iPhone 6 big	1488x840 *	311	4.8x2.7	5.51	122	12.2x6.86	14

But we'll know soon enough.

* Rounded a bit to a number divisible by a power of two.

Permalink - posted 2014-08-26

Was the iPad a fad?

▼ Many people's first take on the iPad was that "it's just a big iPod touch". And so it is, really. But sentiments changed quickly as sales numbers skyrocketed: the king (the computer) is dead, long live the new king (the iPad). But then iPad sales numbers went down for two consecutive quarters. While Mac sales were up.

There are of course many possible explanations: iPads aren't upgraded biennially¹ like phones, but rather every three years or longer. Apple's prices are too high. Competition from cheap Android tablets.

Software on the iPad doesn't seem to do very well, either, which has its own issues, but I think the real reason for lack of both hard- and software sales is that the iPad simply isn't as useful to as many people as industry watchers thought.

Although I'm pretty deep inside the Apple eco system, having bought six Apple laptops and three iPhones (one of each every two years), I never got an iPad. The laptop can do everything, the phone is with me 24 hours a day. Do I really want to spend money on a third device that occupies middle ground? My answer: no. Especially not as long as Apple limits what kind of software gets to run on the iPad. On a phone that makes some sense, as it has a tiny battery and the phone function needs to work reliably. But not on the iPad, which is for all intents and purposes a general purpose computer that's rarely far away from a power outlet for long.

The way I see it, the iPad has three main use cases for consumers:

1. Early adopters. Why sit on the couch with a big laptop or a small phone when you can have a third device that's perfect for that particular use case?
2. Young kids. The touch interface and the size of the device is perfect for them.
3. Reluctant computer users. No file system, simplified OS and user interface, but they still get to browse the web, send the occasional email and the like.

The trouble with the first group is that there are only so many people who are willing to spend the money for something that is just a little bit better for some uses than something they already have. The same thing for kids: kids tend to break stuff, and iPads aren't cheap. So unless/until the price comes down, or maybe until Apple introduces a more rugged model, the main market for iPads has to be people who prefer the simplicity of an iPad over the complexity of a computer.

I just don't think this group is as big as many people seem to think. My mother was around 50 when she got her first computer. I was surprised at how well she managed to use it. That was more than a decade ago, when things like networking and managing photos and music were much harder than they are today. Most people under 60 manage just fine with "real" computers, and aren't going to give up useful features for the simplicity of an iPad.

And if iPads can't displace real computers, they're going to remain a third device, which only does a few things better than a laptop or a smartphone, but adding the hassle of another device to manage and charge, as well as the complexity of syncing data between devices. Sure, iCloud is supposed to take care of that, but only if you're 100% in the Apple ecosystem and don't mind having your data on remote servers. And that's when everything works the way it's supposed to.

I believe the early sales numbers of the iPad were largely fad-fueled. The fad seems to be over now. I'm sure tablet-like devices are here to stay, but so are regular computes. The next clash will be when ballooning smartphone screen sizes and shrinking tablet sizes meet in the middle. However, don't be deceived by "5.5 inch" iPhones vs "7 inch" (actually 7.9") iPads. The new extra big iPhone would have a 12.4 x 7 cm screen, while the iPad mini has a 16 x 12 cm screen. So the iPad mini still has more than twice the screen area as a 5.5" iPhone.

¹ Originally I wrote "semi-anually", but it was brought to my attention that the word is spelled "semiannually" (I know I shouldn't trust the spell checker!) and it actually means twice a year. The correct term for every other year is biennially, not to be confused with biannually, which again means twice a year.

Permalink - posted 2014-08-25