Apple's iBeacon system has been widely ignored and is poorly understood. Yet it's one of the most transformative mobile technologies to come along in the last 10 years.
- Makes your device transmit as a Proximity Beacon with iBeacon™ Technology and configurable identifiers. Finds nearby beacons with Eddystone, iBeacon and AltBeacon formats with real-time distance estimates and displays all identifiers of each one discovered.
- Makes your device transmit as a Proximity Beacon with iBeacon™ Technology and configurable identifiers. Finds nearby beacons with Eddystone, iBeacon and AltBeacon formats with real-time distance estimates and displays all identifiers of each one discovered.
Because the app you write must run in the foreground, iBeacon support on iOS devices is intended for testing purposes and for apps that always run in the foreground anyway, such as point-of sale apps.
The public's ambivalent or hostile relationship with iBeacon exists because iBeacon is invisible to users. And, in any event, iBeacon is presented as either a boring or creepy way for retail stores to track customers.
All that is changing. I'm going to tell you how iBeacon is being deployed in increasingly fun places. But first, let me dispel some misconceptions about iBeacon.
4 myths about iBeacon
1. iBeacon is an 'indoor location' technology. Apple's iBeacon is beacon technology. Beacons are usually described as 'indoor location' technology, but that's misleading. They work outside just as well as they work inside. Other location technologies, such as cell tower triangulation and Wi-Fi-based location tools, also work both indoors and out. The key attribute of beacons is not that they're for use inside buildings, but that they enable very precise location calculations -- to within a few inches.
Beacons are inexpensive transmitters (costing as little as $5 each) that broadcast low-power Bluetooth signals, which specially built phone apps can receive.
2. iBeacon is for Apple products only. Any smartphone running an app designed to be compatible with iBeacon can be used with an iBeacon setup. That includes phones running Android and other mobile operating systems.
However, Apple's iBeacon technology is interesting in that any Apple device running the current operating system can itself act as a beacon in addition to accepting signals from beacons.
So it's not true that iBeacon is for Apple products only -- any phone can detect and use iBeacons. But it is true that, at present, only Apple products running iOS can act as beacons in an iBeacon setting.
3. iBeacons track you and harvest personal information when you walk nearby. Let's be very clear about this one: Beacons cannot receive data.
However, they can tell an app on your phone that your phone is very close to the beacon. But it's your phone that's sending that information -- the beacon can give your phone only its unique identifiers. It requires an app and a service to turn that identifier into something meaningful. If you don't download an iBeacon app, keep your Bluetooth on and give explicit permission to the app, iBeacon cannot be used to track you.
4. iBeacon allows the NSA to track your location. The iBeacon system is a horrible surveillance tool. For starters, as mentioned above, it only works if the user downloads an app and the user has to grant the app permission. Also: Your phone (and therefore your carrier) already knows you're at the mall, and it can probably tell you're in the Apple store. App store for i mac. What iBeacon technology determines is that you're near the iPad section of the store -- and that information is of little use to the NSA.
Also: There's no evidence that the NSA has ever used iBeacon to track anyone.
Where iBeacon is popping up
Apple's iBeacon has from the beginning been associated with boring retail implementations, and those are totally unseen because shoppers aren't in the habit of running an app while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. But now iBeacon systems are showing up in more fun and interesting places.
The new iOS 7.1, which Apple launched this week, contained massively improved iBeacon functionality.
Among these improvements is that Apple has cancelled an element of user permission. Once you’ve installed a store’s app — say, for example, Apple’s own Apple store app — that store can put messages on your lock screen even if the app isn’t running!
I think it’s a real improvement. But I’m surprised privacy fans aren’t freaking out.
I interviewed Doug Thompson this week on my show, Tech News Today, who very clearly explained what iBeacon is and how Apple changed it. (Thompson is blogs on the BEEKn blog, which is focused on beacon technologies, design and development.) If you want a quick primer on what iBeacon is and how it’s been upgraded, I recommend my interview with him.
In a nutshell, the improvements to iBeacon fall into two categories. The first is in the area of general performance. Overall responsiveness for iBeacon is much better than before, according to developers who have tried it.
The second is in the area of permissions.
It’s a bi-product of the fact that the public doesn’t understand the magnitude of how iBeacon and beacon technology will change human culture that the techno-panic crowd isn’t freaking out about the update.
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In the past, iBeacon was opt-in. Now, it’s opt-out. In the previous system, iBeacon-enabled stores, stadiums and museus were required to ask permission of the user for iBeacon access to their phones. Now, they no longer need that permission. Apple has already granted permission to the stores to access your iPhone.
You do have to install an app, though. For example, let’s say your local mall installs an iBeacon system for directions to stores, promotions, coupons and other information. Your iPhone won’t be affected by their iBeacon system unless you install the mall’s app. But once you do install the app, the app no longer needs to be running in order for the iBeacon system to interact with your phone.
So with the mall’s app not running at all, you’ll still get messages on your lock screen from the mall’s iBeacon system.
Iphone Ibeacon App
This is a huge shift for Apple. In the past, according to Thompson, an app had to be running in order to throw up messages onto the lock screen. Apple appears to be making an exception for iBeacon apps.
If you signed up for the mall’s system because you wanted to get discounts from the Gap. And later, the Gap goes out of business and is replaced by Victoria’s Secret, which also uses the mall’s iBeacon system for promotions, you’re now going to get underwear ads on your lock screen without granting any permission or even running the app.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch, though. Uninstalling the app, or re-setting the location permissions or shutting off Bluetooth will each opt you out of the mall’s iBeacon system.
You should also know that iBeacon beacons don’t actually track you or collect data from your iPhone. They can only transmit information TO your phone. They provide data about location to your iBeacon-supporting app, tell the app where you are with vastly higher precision than, say GPS or cell-tower triangulation can, and they can do it indoors. Any reporting of location, any transmission of data, any downloading of data happens through your phone’s WiFi or mobile broadband connection, controlled by the app and governed by the permissions you’ve granted.
What’s great about the new iBeacon, and it’s opt-out approach is that it should drive a lot more adoption toward iBeacon. In the past, any prospective retailer or app developer might have sifted through the details of iBeacon and found the prospect of getting people to use it daunting.
And ask yourself: How often have you, an Apple fan devoted enough to read Cult of Mac, use Apple’s iBeacon app when you’ve gone into the local Apple store. If you’re like the majority, you’ve never tried it. If you’re like one minority, you tried it once and never did again. The percentage of Apple store users who turn it on each time they go in almost certainly rounds to zero.
Under the 7.1 release, though, anyone who has installed the Apple store app will now get pinged when they go in. If Apple pings with useful or compelling information, the user will launch the app and participate.
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In other words, making iBeacon opt-out for the users who have installed the app is a minimum requirement for it to have a prayer of being useful to stores and app developers.
Ibeacon App Development
I think the upgrade to iBeacon, and specifically the conversion of notifications from opt in to opt out is a great one. But I’m frankly surprised that privacy fans, the sort of people who falsely believed the old iBeacon was already a privacy violation, aren’t having fits about this new feature.