Today, we’re introducing a way for Quick Share to work with AirDrop.
When it comes to sharing moments between family and friends, what device you have shouldn’t matter — sharing should just work. But we’ve heard from many people that they want a simpler way to share files between devices.
Today, we’re introducing a way for Quick Share to work with AirDrop. This makes file transfer easier between iPhones and Android devices, and starts rolling out today to the Pixel 10 family.
We built this with security at its core, protecting your data with strong safeguards that were tested by independent security experts. It’s just one more way we’re bringing better compatibility that people are asking for between operating systems, following our work on RCS and unknown tracker alerts.
We’re looking forward to improving the experience and expanding it to more Android devices. See it in action on the Pixel 10 Pro in this video, and try it out for yourself!
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This is based on Wi-Fi Aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Alliance#Wi-Fi_Aware
Some background: https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
On the Apple side, this was prompted by the EU Digital Markets Act: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/questions-and-answe...
I'm pretty sure this is just incorrect. According to the linked report[1], they tested it for compatibility with OpenDrop, so I think they simply implemented AWDL.
That might also explain the limited Pixel 10 rollout, if it required a specific WiFi chipset/firmware.
[1] https://www.netspi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/google-fea...
By shaky-carrousel 2025-11-2113:56 In the last link provided by parent you can read:
> Close-range wireless file transfers: this feature allows to access the same iOS-controlled features as Apple’s services in third-party file sharing apps, creating, for example, alternatives to AirDrop.
As you can read here (https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...):
> Under pressure from the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple is being forced to ditch its proprietary peer-to-peer Wi-Fi protocol – Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) – in favor of the industry-standard Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN). A quietly published EU interoperability roadmap mandates Apple support Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in iOS 19 and v5.0,1 thereafter, essentially forcing AWDL into retirement. This post investigates how we got here (from Wi-Fi Direct to AWDL to Wi-Fi Aware), what makes Wi-Fi Aware technically superior, and why this shift unlocks true cross-platform peer-to-peer connectivity for developers.
That's what was confusing to me. It's one thing for Apple to add wifi aware by force, it would be another for them to completely reimplement Airdrop with it. I don't think they were required to do that.
By shaky-carrousel 2025-11-2113:573 reply They were required to drop AWDL, yes. They had to reimplement AirDrop.
https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
They weren't specifically required to drop AWDL, they were just required to implement WiFi-Aware in such a manner that neither technology had an advantage.
In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.
I doubt they would've had to implement any specific protocol if they had just opened up AWDL, but I suppose they'd rather keep that closed to maintain the ability to guard their walled garden in non-EU devices.
By cowsandmilk 2025-11-2115:59 > In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.
They need Airdrop to work with phones who haven’t upgraded, so doesn’t feel like a waste to me. And they already have working AWDL code, so it’s just maintenance, probably not a ton of work.
By acedTrex 2025-11-2115:49 They are not required to drop awdl, they just have to support wifi aware as well.
By gumby271 2025-11-2115:45 So does Mac OS support Wifi Aware now? I didn't think so, which is confusing if Airdrop still works between iOS and Mac OS.
By felipeerias 2025-11-2023:241 reply I was experimenting with this technology almost a decade ago as part of my work as interaction designer:
https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-dev...
It has a lot of potential but unfortunately it has been kept back until now by lack of support and interoperability.
By ricardobeat 2025-11-2023:5010 reply Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well – by banging your phone against the spacebar. It worked 98% of the time and was faster than AirDrop is today, even though we only had 3G.
Google acquired it and immediately killed it.
Bump didn't use direct device-to-device communication. A central server correlated the two bumping phones, based on geolocation and accelerometer data, then swapped the data via the server. At least that's how it worked in the early days. (Wiki page confirms)
Since it's relying on your internet connection, skeptical it'd be faster than AirDrop for a large amount of data like photos. But for swapping contacts I bet it was faster since it didn't have to spend time establishing a new direct connection.
By ricardobeat 2025-11-219:04 That's true, I should have mentioned it did not use device-to-device communication. It was the best possible experience for the time though, BT was not viable and wifi direct did not exist. 3G averaged at maybe 10Mbps, and photos were 2 megapixels (if you had a camera at all), more than enough speed. We were mostly sharing URLs and contacts.
By faster I mean the initial connection, it was instant despite the server-based pairing, which made it feel even more magical. With AirDrop you sometimes experience quite a bit of signal hunting.
A comparable experience would be when you touch phones to share a contact with NFC, it was in that ballpark of responsiveness.
Waaay back when in Japan, sekigaisen (infrared) was a verb meaning to transfer contact details or photos or whatever between phones via infrared. It was amazing how fast the iPhone took over Japan and killed off their quirky phone ecosystem.
Edit: want to emphasize that it was totally ubiquitous. Every phone has it
By parl_match 2025-11-210:16 yes, "beaming" in the us was also used for quite a while. as in IR beam
japanese phones were buggy, feature packed monstrosities. a bunch of companies fighting to check as many boxes as they could. it's not a surprise that they got wiped out by an attempt to make a holistic internet communicator.
but for a while, there was nothing like them and their ability to get information on the internet
By Lutzb 2025-11-218:49 I wonder if this was driven by the Palm Pilots in the early 2000s. We beamed contacts, calendar entries, whole apps via IR. At trade shows exhibitors had terminals that would constantly send out contact informations via OBEX (?).
By edbaskerville 2025-11-214:31 In the US (edit: and elsewhere!), "beaming" worked great between Apple Newton devices, including the pretty cool eMate 300 (an early Jony Ive creation, I just found on Wikipedia).
In 1993.
By onlyhumans 2025-11-218:401 reply Microsoft Zune had the ability to send music wirelessly to other Zunes, it was called squirting
By type0 2025-11-219:17 Somehow "squirting their users" perfectly defines Microsoft to this day
By throawayonthe 2025-11-2111:29 squirt me bro
By ehnto 2025-11-212:28 I remember being blown away by the Gameboy Colour IR link. You could use it to trade Pokemon. That makes a bit more sense now if sekigaisen was already a popular ecosystem.
By cachius 2025-11-2112:20 And in Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal on GameBoy Color you could send Mystery gifts via IR!
Someone even ported it to an emulator! https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art11.html
My friends in school would send ringtones, wallpapers, and other small files through Bluetooth. It normally worked pretty well no matter the device.
When I was pretty early in my career, I inherited a legacy project from the CTO who didn't want to maintain it anymore. We decided as a team that I'd just recreate the project with a modern tool chain.
A few weeks later, the CTO looked at my work and asked why it was missing xyz features from his legacy project, saying that if I'm gonna take a project and rewrite it, it better be at least as good as the old project.
It was a pretty good lesson for me to get early in my career, and I've carried it with me ever since. Don't break or rewrite that which already works.
It's evident that no one at Google ever got that lesson.
NB: I know Google definitely has other reasons for acquiring and killing off Bump — they were probably building a competing technology that was shitty and bump was doing it better and sooner than them so better to buy and kill than to make their own product better. But I think my the lesson from my anecdote still stands from a purely product point of view, and I feel like it should make business sense but apparently you can make bad micro business decisions as long as you can convince shareholders they were good macro business decisions.
I changed my thoughts on rewriting after reading this:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
PS: I just realized this article is older than some of the people here.
By skydhash 2025-11-2114:28 I would rewrite if the alternative is maintaining bad code for a long time. But yeah, it’s best to be pessimistic. And be really careful about changes. There are books written about the methods to use.
By abustamam 2025-11-2117:00 Wow! Not quite older than me, but my age was in the single digits :)
Thanks for sharing, it's always great to learn from folks who have been through it for literal decades.
The lesson I retain from a similar endeavor is that you should document all the usecase of a module or a project before rewriting them. And that task can be as exhausting as formally verifying the module.
By abustamam 2025-11-2117:03 Yeah, it could be several weeks or even months before even writing a single line of code depending on size of project. Important to do, but PMs would be a hard to sell that to :(
(Ideally these things are written while the code is being written but let's be honest, we rarely keep those up to date)
By lxgr 2025-11-2116:26 > Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well
Over the Internet. There are dozens of such services, and none of them can compete with Airdrop.
The main point of Airdrop is that it doesn't need Internet connectivity and won't use any metered data (or, on recent iOS versions, at least if Wi-Fi Assist is turned off, I believe).
Just as important is the fact that there's no need to install any application – any Apple device comes with Airdrop preinstalled.
By pjc50 2025-11-2111:03 I do wonder how many great little user-friendly bits of software got destroyed in aquishutdowns. Incredible way to deploy capital to delete software, but that's the big internet world for you.
By felipeerias 2025-11-216:28 If I am not mistaken, Bump still required a connection to the Internet. WiFi Aware does not, because the phones create an ad-hoc link on the spot.
The connection can be very fast. In this example, a 280 MB file is transferred in less than 10 seconds:
By SchemaLoad 2025-11-213:263 reply What's sad is what largely replaced device to device transfers was just messaging apps. But messaging apps compress media horribly. iMessage isn't so bad, but send a photo through almost anything else and all meta data is stripped, and the image resolution and bitrate are the absolute bare minimum to look ok on a phone. But try to print it and it will be horrible.
By padraic7a 2025-11-219:23 Stripping the metadata on a photo is probably a feature though. For privacy reasons the default should most likely be that location, device info etc are taken out of photos that might go viral or be shared beyond what the original user intended.
By whywhywhywhy 2025-11-213:34 > iMessage isn't so bad
iMessage is very bad in certain circumstances, think if the recipient is on 3G or 4G it really compresses videos. It's not obvious and doesn't tell the recipient or offer an option so if you're working in video you keep being told "Can you make it higher res" when this happens
There could probably be a niche market (until platforms implement the functionality) for enhancing the metadata of Whatsapp pictures from family & friends and guess it from the context. i.e. your auntie sending you now a picture of yourself 30 years ago which will show up as dated 2025 by default, which totally sucks.
By givinguflac 2025-11-2116:12 Your comment reminded me of this:
By Affric 2025-11-212:17 Bump was like magic.
The only app I have ever truly thought “this is the future”
By lgvld 2025-11-211:38 Very cool, didn't know such app had existed, thank you! Wanted to use a similar approach to connect people in a smaller friends-only social network.
I can almost guarantee it wasn’t faster than airdrop (when it works) is today. I remember using bump on wifi, and it was limited to (shocking) wifi speeds at the time. I have as recently as last week transferred 1GB video files in under 20 seconds using airdrop. That simply was not possible in 2009.
By ricardobeat 2025-11-2115:54 Connection speed, not transfer speed indeed – that was purely network dependent. In any case nobody was transferring 1GB files from their phones at the time :)
By nickphx 2025-11-211:55 airdrop uses wifi direct... so
Do we know for a fact that DMA has anything to do with it? According to Google, Apple had nothing to do with this announcement. The way I have read it is a bunch of Google hackers reverse engineered Airdrop and that's that. And it's coming to other Android devices, so the Pixel 10 lock-in is just a marketing move.
The DMA forced Apple to move all of their P2P Wi-Fi stuff from their proprietary AWDL stack to the current Wi-Fi Aware-based implementation. Whatever work Google did to reverse engineer Airdrop was based on the Wi-Fi Aware implementation of Airdrop, rather than the older AWDL. They didn't get the whole stack for free, but it's not nothing either.
By madeofpalk 2025-11-218:271 reply Do we have proof this actually happened, or theorising based on EU requirements?
You can read the actual ruling at https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
This is the "smoking gun" section:
(N.B. The decision calls it "iOS 19" because it predates Apple announcing that "iOS 19" would actually be called iOS 26)5.4.8. Implementation timing (245) Apple should provide effective interoperability with the P2P Wi-Fi connection feature by implementing the measures for Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in the next major iOS release, i.e. iOS 19, at the latest, and for Wi-Fi Aware 5.0 in the next iOS release at the latest nine months following the introduction of the Wi-Fi Aware 5.0 specification.It is possible, I suppose, that Apple intended all along to release this feature with iOS 26. You'd have to be an Apple insider to know for sure. But the simpler explanation is that they did it because the EU told them to.
By madeofpalk 2025-11-2111:143 reply But does Apple use/allow Airdrop over Wi-Fi Aware? It's not clear to me that's something they shipped.
By pdpi 2025-11-2112:53 From the same article I linked:
(§5.7 is 13 pages of exquisitely detailed requirements for Airdrop interop)5.7.8. Implementation timing (402) Apple should implement the measures required to enable the scenario of close-range wireless file transfers while the receiving device has the relevant close-range wireless file transfer solution open by 1 June 2026. Apple should implement all measures for the features for close-range wireless file transfer solutions in the release of iOS 20, and in any case by the end of 2026.Given Apple's usual release timelines, June 2026 is a bit early for iOS 27 (what the ruling calls iOS 20). In between that, the fact that this is a pretty big piece of feature work, and the fact that they were forced to ship other parts by iOS 26, I find it likelier that Apple shipped this in iOS 26, rather than shipping it some time next year as a point release.
Also, you have to consider the timing. Google is shipping this functionality now, a couple of months after the iOS 26 release. It would be just plain weird for Google to ship a reverse-engineered implementation of Apple's old proprietary stack after Apple has definitely already shipped part of the new, interoperable stack.
By leo60228 2025-11-220:57 They don't. Google implemented AWDL, as can be trivially proven by just running `strings` on the new code in Play Services.
This is great! I notice that’s on the ditto blog. I can see why the ditto developers are watching with keen eyes!
I have a modern digital camera complete with wifi and bluetooth. There’s an app that lets me connect the camera to my iPhone for monitoring, remote shooting and copying photos. Very useful! But right now the only way for the camera to connect to my phone is through some super complicated song and dance, involving my phone requesting a connection over Bluetooth, then the camera running a wifi access point that my phone connects to (during which time my phone disconnects from my home wifi). It’ll be wonderful when my camera can use wifi aware instead, and this can all happen instantly, without permission prompts and without booting me off wifi in the process.
I really hope we see a resurgence in local-first networking. My wife and I can't even play a LAN game of Age of Empires 2 on a plane unless the flight has wifi.
By zelphirkalt 2025-11-219:331 reply AoE2 is not known for great network code, so I think the hopes for that specifically are pretty slim.
The irony is that the netcode is excellent now, but locked to proprietary platforms.
By zelphirkalt 2025-11-2115:461 reply Is it really excellent? I mean, the game still FPS drops, when only one person in a multiplayer match is lagging. But maybe that could be attributed to engine problems, rather than network code issues.
The rest of the code seems not too great either, considering the humongous system requirements, compared to the historical versions of the game. If you ask me, they could have kept it 2D sprites and it would have been completely fine. But they had to go 3D ...
That's just been my experience. LAN especially seems rock solid, once it's going. All sorts of issues getting it to connect sometimes. Definitely lag sometimes online.
I'm with you on the system requirements bloat. Really sad honestly. That said, I don't think the engine is more 3D than it used to be, is it? I believe it's still isometric 2D with 3D physics. Could definitely (definitively?) be wrong though.
Here's some discussion on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ageofempires/comments/16aowwc/are_t...
By zelphirkalt 2025-11-2123:41 Hmmm that would mean incredibly bad performance though. I mean, there is even a machine performance test, before you can play online, because the game is too heavy for many machines these days, while running 8p games just fine back in the day on waaaaay weaker hardware than most people have these days. What then is causing the massive performance regressions? Maybe resolution increase?
To me it looks kinda 3D, when you pane left right and look at buildings, but I could be wrong and that could be merely some effect, that also takes some on the fly calculation.
By Orphis 2025-11-2118:26 Which app are you using?
By madeofpalk 2025-11-210:37 Is it actually? Apple supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware? Any source or confirmation?
By artursapek 2025-11-213:142 reply It's hilarious that such a simple thing has taken this long for the world to build, and it's only because Apple was forced to allow it.
By troupo 2025-11-217:56 Oh, I fully expect Apple to have a hissy fit about this. <queue in incoherent ramblings about privacy and user choice in 3... 2... 1...>
Apple's users bought iPhones en masse without them having this feature.
By artursapek 2025-11-213:30 I understand that. But "this feature" is simply sending a file around between the two big mobile operating systems. It's absurd to me how this is a big product launch in 2025.
By rafaelcosta 2025-11-2113:361 reply AirDrop works via AWDL, I think you're just wrong...
By shaky-carrousel 2025-11-2113:581 reply Not anymore.
By prettymuchnoone 2025-11-2118:35 but if airdrop as of OS26 uses wifi aware, and the proprietary awdl version has been shuttered due to the eu regulation, how come devices on that software version can still airdrop to older devices?
By tkel 2025-11-2023:13 Pretty sure that ditto article is written by AI ... there's an entire section dedicated to the imagined 5.0 spec..
It's interesting that apple released 3rd party Wi-Fi Aware SDK for iOS and iPadOS but no for MacOS...
MacOS doesn’t have a gatekeeper status in the Digital Markets Act (DMA), so Apple doesn’t need to provide it. This shows that they only provide the SDK because of regulatory pressure, and try to maintain their vendor lock-in where possible.
By manquer 2025-11-210:54 Not necessarily, Since 2015 launch NAN has been vaporware outside android, nobody else support it. Windows does not do so today either [1].
In Linux iw and the new cfg80211 NAN module has support for some hardware. There are few chips in desktop/laptop ecosystem that have the feature, but it is hard to know which ones today, it is more common not to have support than to.
AFAIK no major distros include UI based support that regular users can use. Most Chromebooks do not have the hardware to support, ChromeOS[2] did not have support OOB, so even Google does not implement it for all their devices in the first place.
For Apple to implement is easier than Microsoft or Google given their vertical control, but not simple even if they wanted to. They may still need a hardware update/change and they typically rollout few versions of the hardware first before they announce support so most people have access to it, given the hardware refresh cycle it is important for basic user experience which is why people buy Apple. What is the point if you cannot share with most users because they don't have latest hardware? Average user will try couple of times and never use it again because it doesn't "work".
Sometimes competing standards / lack of compliance are political play for control of the standards not about vendor lock-in directly. Developers are the usual casualties in these wars, rather than end users directly. Webdevs been learning that since JScript in the mid 90s.
All this to say, as evidences go this is weak for selective compliance due to regulatory pressure.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2284386/...
[2] I haven't checked recently
Look, you might be right. But you might be wrong. We don't know for sure.
One of my first jobs was in infosec, and there was a sign above one of the senior consultant's door quoting Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". That quote is right.
There's so much going on at any medium-to-large organisation, from engineering to politics and personalities. All that multiplied across hundreds of thousands of people in thousands of teams. Its possible you're right. Apple might have provided an iOS-only SDK for wifi aware because of regulatory pressure. Its also possible they want to provide it on all platforms, but just started with an ios only version because of who works on it, or which business unit they're part of, or politics, or because they think its more useful on ios than on macos. We just don't know.
Whenever I've worked in large organisations, I'm always amazed how much nonsense goes on internally that is impossible to predict from the outside. Like, someone emails us about something important. It makes the rounds internally, but the person never gets emailed back. Why? Maybe because nobody inside the company thought it was their job to get back to them. Or Steve should really have replied, but he was away on paternity leave or something and forgot about it when he got back to work. Or sally is just bad at writing emails. Or there's some policy that PR needs to read all emails to the public, and nobody could be bothered. And so on. From the outside you just can't know.
I don't know if you're right or wrong. Apple isn't all good or all bad. And the probability isn't 100% and its not 0%. Take off the tin foil hat and have some uncertainty.
Your reply makes sense in a vacuum, but in reality we have the context of having seen Apple comply with regulation maliciously before, so we do know for sure that there's no macOS in the sdk because they weren't forced to by regulation.
> we do know for sure that there's no macOS in the sdk because they weren't forced to by regulation.
Unless you have insider knowledge, we don't know anything for sure here. Apple isn't a person. Apple doesn't have a single, consistent opinion when it comes to openness and EU regulation. (And even a person can change their mind.) All we know is that some teams at apple responded in the past to some EU regulation with malicious compliance. That doesn't tell us for sure what apple will do here.
Apple is 165 000 people. That's a lot of people. A lot more people than comment regularly on HN, and look at us! We don't agree about anything. I'm sure plenty of apple's employees hate EU regulation. And plenty more would love to opensource everything apple does.
That sort of inconsistency is exactly what we see across apple's product line. The Swift programming language is opensource. But SwiftUI is closed source. Webkit and FoundationDB are opensource. But almost everything on iOS is closed source. Apple sometimes promotes open standards - like pushing Firewire, USB and more recently USB-C - which they helped to design. But they also push plenty of proprietary standards that they keep under lock and key. Like the old 20-pin ipod connector, that companies had to pay money to apple to be allowed to use in 3rd party products. Or Airdrop. Or iMessage. AFS (apple filesystem) is closed source. But its also incredibly well documented. My guess is the engineers responsible want to support 3rd party implementations of AFS but for some reason they're prohibited from open-sourcing their own implementation.
We don't know anything for sure here. For my money, there's even odds in a year or two this API quietly becomes available on macos, watchos and tvos as well. If you "know for sure" that won't happen, lets make a bet at 100-1 odds. If you're sure, its free money for you.
I largely agree with you but want to highlight a few points.
> Apple doesn't have a single, consistent opinion when it comes to openness and EU regulation.
But it does have a greedy leader who can and does override everyone else.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/24/apple-exec-phil-schiller-t...
> Apple is 165 000 people. That's a lot of people. A lot more people than comment regularly on HN
How do you know the HN numbers? I’m not doubting you, I’m curious about the data.
> and look at us! We don't agree about anything.
At the same time, anyone can join HN. There’s no “culture fit” or anything like that. It is possible to have a larger difference of ideas in a smaller pool of people.
> AFS (apple filesystem)
APFS, not AFS.
It’s a few million page views on the front page and a small fraction commenting.
By latexr 2025-11-2111:17 Again, what’s the source of the data? Anyone can throw around vague numbers. “A few million” and “a small fraction” provide no useful information for the context.
By dguest 2025-11-2115:53 Crazy what those kooky Europeans do. Now if I have a friend, I can
- send a file to their phone
- charge their phone if they visit me [1] (without a huge bag of accessories)
- send them money [2] (without them giving some weird company their banking details)
- pay them [3] (even if they are from a neighboring country)
What will they think of next?! And to think, some of these things even work in the US. What a time to be alive.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Equipment_Directive_(202...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...
By thewebguyd 2025-11-2021:221 reply Apple will never leave the EU market, that would be a stupid decision. EU is barely smaller than the US market if looking at GDP per capita, it's only a difference of ~$16,000. If looking at population, EU is larger than the US.
Hopefully they keep cracking open the walls of Apple's garden and Apple stops region locking the changes to just those markets.
I read the comment several times, and I can't figure out your intent, or the message, because of how much it's coded in doublespeak. That might also be what trips others up.
Don't you think that "They didn't leave the EU, and surely not leave US [if they start regulating]"?
Makes it clear?
Background sentiment, US politicians always justify not regulating due to the "fear" of corpos leaving?
By npteljes 2025-11-2022:10 I didn't catch on to that at all. I even wrote my own comment, but seeing your reaction to the other guys' comments, I have re-read your original, and frankly, couldn't figure it out. I have asked ChatGPT and it decoded your intent correctly, and even seeing that, I couldn't reconcile it with the comment itself.
They say that a lot of communication is lost over text. I'm sure I could have caught the sarcasm if we spoke in real life, but in this textual form, it was completely lost to me, and it seems that for the other commenters as well.
By pxc 2025-11-2022:01 Your previous comment in this thread doesn't even form a sentence. It's unintelligible.
By JLCarveth 2025-11-2022:08 Your previous comment was a run on sentence and didn't make much sense at all.
By shepherdjerred 2025-11-2022:00 your comment was a little hard to parse
The day Apple leaves the EU will be the day that its shareholders will string Apple's CEO up by his own entrails.
His successor will immediately reverse course.
I read your whole comment, and damned if I know what you’re trying to say. The problem does not lie with the reading comprehension of your audience.
Don't you think that "They didn't leave the EU, and surely not leave US [if they start regulating]"?
Makes it clear?
Background sentiment, US politicians always justify not regulating due to the "fear" of corpos leaving?
By Gander5739 2025-11-219:17 [dead]
Possibly relevant comment from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893693
>AirDrop also shares your full name (seemingly the one associated with your Apple ID, not what you have set for yourself in your contacts), both by displaying it in the sharing interface on the involved devices and by attaching it as an extended attribute to uploaded files.
>So if you AirDrop some files to your computer and then zip them up, anyone you send that zip to (a journalist, a public file-hosting site, w/e) will have your full legal name to go with them.
Linked article from that thread is moved to https://medium.com/@kieczkowska/introduction-to-airdrop-fore... (but is archived).
I wonder if Google is adding metadata as well. Otherwise there does seem to be the problem of, for example, threats being AirDropped in a public place.
Using macOS 26 and iOS 26 I was unable to reproduce their findings. I airdropped a photo from my iOS device to my laptop, and nothing in `mdls`, `xattr -l`, `exiftool -s`, `rg -i` showed my name.
It wouldn't surprise if Apple had fixed this, it's the sortof thing they would fix, but it may be worth trying with 2 devices not from the same iCloud account. Wouldn't surprise me if the code paths were subtly different in that case.
By quitit 2025-11-2111:45 They would seem to contain identifiers as law enforcement have been able to follow up on instances where there has been airdropping of perverse images, but as noted by others the files don't include names.
The problem with airdrop (and likely why the 10 minute setting now exists) is that it includes a preview image as part of the notification request.
So other than being able to subject someone to perverse images, preview images have also been used in state-sponsored zero-click attacks to infect the phones of their targets. While that vector seems to be muted for now, the 10 minute setting provides a layer of defence against both potential future zero-clicks and receiving unsolicited previews images.
By NaomiLehman 2025-11-2020:552 reply Just a tip - You can put any string as your name for your Apple ID. you can also change it at any time. I have it as Mac Book. It's not checked when making any credit card payment, AFAIK.
Just keep in mind, if you give your device to the Apple Store for repairs, they'll automatically expect the person who is picking up to have a matching ID to the Apple account.
It was a fun misunderstanding to resolve when I went to pick up my repaired Macbook Pro and they expected my ID to say Mark Suckerberg. It was resolved relatively uneventfully but still had to get the manager over.
By andscoop 2025-11-212:03 Another fun side effect, if you put an emoji in your name, you'll need to manually edit it every time you use Apple pay or it breaks the transaction.
Is anything but the zip code actually checked ever? Besides the number and cv2 or whatever.
No. Credit card transactions cannot check for name or billing a part from the zip code. Also the zip code validation only works in certain countries like the US, and Canada.
The way to validate that works is Visa 3DS or MasterCard 3D Secure. Those sent an OTP from the issuer to the cardholder on the issuer database, usually an email or SMS. The issuer of the card is the only who really knows the owner of the card.
By nulbyte 2025-11-2112:48 > Credit card transactions cannot check for name or billing a part from the zip code.
This is not true. Name and address verification is common.
https://corporate.visa.com/en/solutions/acceptance/verificat...
By lmm 2025-11-212:44 They get compared yes, and it feeds into the fraud likelihood score that the merchant gets sent. And then usually chooses to ignore, because they make more from going ahead with the transaction than from stopping because it's suspicious, but it makes it easier for the credit card industry to put the liability on them.
By justsomehnguy 2025-11-211:161 reply Number, date (though I never bothered to check if it's actually checked, besides stupid frontend shenanigans when I couldn't enter it because it had a whole whooping month ahead of the current date) and CVC.
As soon as I learned what BANK NAME is acceptable name I used it almost everywhere.
I’ve never heard of this. Are you saying I could enter “MyLocal Bank” as the payer name instead of my own when transacting online with a credit card? This seems like the kind of fact that should be essential privacy knowledge if true!
By justsomehnguy 2025-11-211:491 reply Well, try it. But don't blame if some over zealous merchant would deny you without refund despite receiving you money.
By jeromegv 2025-11-212:54 This might not work super well if your package is crossing border either. Sure it's your billing address and not your shipping address, but sometimes they are all the same.
By NaomiLehman 2025-11-2112:25 Well, for example, I can set Stripe Radar to hard match the name on the CC, for example. Very granular control is possible, but doing stuff like checking zip codes, names leads to false negatives and isn't worth it, in my experience.
By 1718627440 2025-11-2114:491 reply Do other file systems even support the extended attributes from Apple?
By kccqzy 2025-11-2116:04 When you create a ZIP, the extended attributes are saved to separate files. When you copy them to a FAT filesystem they are also saved to separate files.
"... then zip them up, anyone you send that zip to (a journalist, a public file-hosting site, w/e) will have your full legal name ..."
A bit of a leap to assume that your Apple ID (or the name you give your iphone) is your full legal name ... or related to any name at all ...
My apple ID is built specifically for just that phone and is jettisoned when I upgrade/change the phone. The apple ID is not related to my own name.
I don't consider this an aggressive - or even interesting - privacy practice.
Did you use your full legal name when you signed up with Blizzard for WoW ? Why would you do anything different for Apple ?
They are not the IRS. They are not a passport agency. They are not the government. Stop treating them that way.
By paranoidrobot 2025-11-211:53 If you're someone who's bought into the Apple ecosystem over multiple devices, or ave a partner or children who are also using devices in the Apple ecosystem, then your Apple ID is something that is very definitely tied to you and probably difficult to change/give up when you replace your phone.
I don't think it would be at all surprising to find that the vast majority of people use their legal name or something closely associated with their identity, and that it persists over multiple devices.
By niek_pas 2025-11-2110:52 As defensible as it may be, your behavior is very far from the norm. You may not consider this a aggressive privacy practice but demographically speaking, it absolutely is.
By jamwil 2025-11-2111:24 So you repurchase your entire App Store library when you upgrade your phone?
Incredible! In an astounding feat, it has only taken a mere two decades to enable the world's largest tech companies to provide the most basic levels of interopability.
At this breakneck speed of technological development, one can only imagine what wonderful boons await consumers in the next few decades.
By jeroenhd 2025-11-2115:13 It took the EU forcing Apple's hand. If it were up to Apple, you'd still need to buy an iPhone/iPod/iPad/iMac to get access to basic file sharing.
Apple could have implemented this a long time ago but decided not to implement Bluetooth file sharing.
By Menu_Overview 2025-11-2118:032 reply AirDrop is faster and more secure and reliable than simple Bluetooth file sharing. There are a number of reasons they weren't going to do that.
By gumby271 2025-11-222:34 Hopefully the speed of innovation will increase as Apple is forced to be less shitty of a platform owner.
DAE remember in 2010 when Steve Jobs said that Facetime would be an open industry standard?
By shadowfiend 2025-11-2118:21 FaceTime got caught up in patent issues that precluded both opening it up and resulted in architecture changes: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pat... .
By eviks 2025-11-2111:47 They're might have exhausted their centennial budget of cooperation on trivial things!
By symbogra 2025-11-218:23 I feel like we have finally entered the 21st century! Next stop moon bases and flying cars!
By richwater 2025-11-2115:38 Airdrop has nothing to do with Bluetooth
By dzhiurgis 2025-11-2121:59 Indeed. We have flying cars, FSD, AI and borderline AGI, robots, yet file sharing is like breakthrough in technologia.
This is why we need more scrutiny against big tech. Interop and platform openess.
