I can’t tell if I’m just too old and infirmed to understand the information needs of the younger generations. But between nearby share, wifi direct, and bluetooth transfer… I have no idea what function I am missing out on. What does airdrop do that makes life so tedious in the absence of?
Airdrop is a little bit less friction than all of the other technologies you mention, but the real problem is that Apple has declined to implement any of the technologies you mentioned, and decided to only support Airdrop for transferring files between devices.
So it you want to transfer a file from iPhone to iPhone, than Airdrop is easy and frictionless.
If you want to transfer a file from Android to Android, then you have all the options you mention and many more to choose from.
But if you want to transfer a file from iPhone to Android (or Android to iPhone), then there basically isn’t any options. Airdrop doesn’t work on Android because Apple doesn’t allow it. And all the options you mentioned doesn’t work be cause Apple has refused to implement them.
LocalSend works on them all, its open source and is completely frictionless.
You are correct, and I use it myself, right up until you aren’t on the same local network…
I actually haven’t tested whether it works if you make a mobile hotspot… But being out in a bar that doesn’t offer WiFi, would then require you to first set up a mobile hotspot, get the other person to connect, then download localsend before you can actually transfer the file. And even if the bar offered WiFi, you would kinda hope that the bar has enabled client isolation on the network to avoid spreading malware… But that would in turn defeat Localsend.
With Airdrop you don’t need any of that, given that both people have iDevices
LocalSend is so good 👌
I suppose I don’t understand what you mean when you say “friction”. I’m assuming you mean some sort of difficulty or complexity that makes the process less straightforward than “pressing button make airdrop go brrrr” - in which case I would say is entirely consistent with the ecosystem apple has made for itself.
I don’t own an Apple device, but the few time I have interacted with Airdrop it has basically been:
- Press button to share something with Airdrop
- Select the device to send to
- target device receives notification to accept.
- Press accept
- Done
And this has just worked regardless of which combination of Apple devices I had available at the time.
In the ideal case this is just as simple for Androids. But I have tried many different combinations of the technologies that was mentioned above and different types of devices, different brands. And sometimes it just works. But way too often I see a failure for the devices to discover eachother, or once discovered the file failed to transfer, with no obvious explanation of why.
Lol, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I’ve used rooted custom ROM devices since cyanogen mod says and have never had an issue. Weird ones too. Obscure global phones only sold in india or s america. Some work better than others. But I’ve never had issues with proximity file transfers. Wifi direct is my favorite, but some locked devices restrict this. In those cases BT worked fine (albeit slower).
That would be very frustrating if that were also my experience though. I suppose I can understand a use case for wanting another option. Thanks for the perspective!
Also curious. All I know is that sharing via bluetooth seemed to be strangely absent from IPhones last time I checked. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I swear we couldn’t find it. Ended up sharing photos over the PC with a USB cable like in the old days. Interacting with apple users and their walled garden is always an experience…
Yes, it is absent, in favour of the proprietary AirDrop.
Lol, yet again, apple makes its products proprietary to the extent of unusability, but it’s the rest of the world that must adopt apple’s garbage just so iphone users can actually function… Meanwhile I have to listen to the most entitled braindead morons forever crow about how the rest of the world should just get an iphone so that their iphone will work. I literally don’t know a single android user that gives a shit what device other people use. But I have to hear about it weekly from iphone users.
I’ve just decided that I don’t care.
LocalSend should be a core util of every OS
Go EU! Make Apple play fair!
I really don’t understand why this isn’t the norm. Capitalism is a tool. You wouldn’t ask a hammer where to hit but it’s totally ok that capitalism is allowed to make its own rules.
Without humans, there is no capitalism. Can we please start to prioritize people and ignore corporate crying. They always cry, it maximizes profit.
Fuck em, use their potential to really help society to create real, sustainable improvements. If everyone follows the same rules, it’s not even unfair for them
Capitalism is a tool for capitalists to increase their wealth, that‘s mostly it
Bullshit. Without capitalism we wouldn’t have any of the improvements we have today. It’s a tool, a system to increase wealth. It just is used wrong, because it is way to influential in areas it shouldn’t be able to set the rules.
Think about it, what exactly is wealth? Wealth is good, its just the unfair distribution that’s the problem.
Nothing even comes close to capitalism in creating wealth and advancement
Jesus titty fucking Christ. I don’t want to deal with Apple dogshit chattery protocols.
You don’t have to, just don’t use it.
Isn’t there already an open standard for this that Apple could simply adopt?
Edit: I could have sworn Matter was talking about including an airdrop-like service but I can’t find a link.
This goes deeper, it’s about devs getting access to pretty much any API that Apple only uses internally
This. They’re in a position of power where developers are beholden to what APIs they offer externally, so they can always give their offerings a leg up that no other service can compete with and if you engineer around their imposed limitations, then your app will never make it onto their App Store.
Steve Jobs would just pull the whole fucking thing out of EU.
He probably wouldn’t. Even if he hadn’t died of sheer pig headed stubbornness.
And lose one of the biggest and wealthy markets on the planet?
Doubt it.
But it would be nice though. If companies can not hold themselves to the law, they shouldn’t be part of our society. Some better company that does follow the law will fill in the market in no time.
Sure.
Short of email or a messaging program nothing exists to be able to transfer files between an iOS and Android based phone. There are some third party utilities that say they can do it bit they’re all janky and well, 3rd party.
Hm… I’m all for open standards, but Apple should retain the right to develop features that work exclusively on their devices (provided their devices support alternative protocols to avoid total lock-in). As open-source and linux loving as I am, I’m a willing prisoner of the Apple closed garden because I appreciate how refined and integrated everything is. (Others’ experience may differ)
The way I read it, they’re not asked to follow an open standard, but to provide a specification for their own standard. That means that they could dictate the pace of development and others could decide for themselves wether or not to implement it for their devices. It’s similar to WhatsApp being forced to provide third parties with API access.
Also, they currently don’t support alternative protocols with cross-platform support and they’re not going to, unless forced.
iPhone does notsupport file sharing over Bluetooth, so it invalidates the condition you put between ().
Huh… Didn’t know. Thanks for pointing it out!
Okay, the EU can have Airdrop.
The experience can still be refined and integrated, without having closed systems for something as simple as sharing a file to another phone. Why would you be against adding more value to your device?
Maintaining backwards compatibility isn’t easy, and cross compatibility just adds more complexity.
The good and the bad of Apple not having the best backwards compatibility is they don’t have to waste time on that. They can do what they do well and make the experience as smooth and seamless as possible. And most importantly move quickly.
I mean just look at windows. Windows 11 has gotten so much shit because they’re trying to change so many things, but they legitimately just can’t. Or on Linux look at its backwards compatibility. That shits a nightmare. Things like flat pack should fix it. But it only fixes it if everything is on flat pack.
Yeah true, so hard to do with their billions of dollars.
All the money in the world won’t make everyone else’s devs fix (or even just update) their shit.
My guy, it would be a standard that would be implemented in future versions. Maybe they would slowly roll that back to older versions, but it wouldnt matter if they didnt, because tech moves so quickly anyway.
It would be implemented as standard into Android and iOS, not individually by every phone manufacturer.
But bro, a 1000 devs get everything done 10x faster than a 100 devs.
Yeah, I don’t get. Let Apple have their walled garden and people can choose to be in or out. They don’t have a monopoly in any hardware or software market, do they?
If so many people choose their walled garden to make them a monopoly then start forcing them open.
