For many months now,Tilecomplains to competition regulators-including the European Commission- that Apple limits its possibilities by only offering to find controlled devices with its Locate application. This is integrated into every Mac, iPad and iPhone and is responsible for geolocating a lost object using GPS, mobile data and Bluetooth. But until now, third-party accessories were not taken into account…
Hence the origin of the conflict between the manufacturer of connected key rings and Tim Cook's company, especially since the former probably takes a very dim view of the arrival ofAirTags. Potential direct alternatives to its solution, these would be under development at Cupertino andcould arrive by the end of the year according to the most persistent rumors…
Soon Tile in the Locate app?
What was shaping up to be a future legal battle should ultimately end there: in fact, Apple has just announced in a press release intended for developers that they could now integrate their ownaccessoriessmart features in the Find My app search tool:
Find My will add support for finding third-party products and accessories with the new Find My network accessory program. This will allow customers to use the Find My app to locate other important items in their lives, in addition to their Apple devices. User privacy remains central to the Find My network with end-to-end encryption built in. A draft specification is available for accessory makers and product manufacturers starting today
In French, the publisher also speaks of end-to-end encryption, and ensures that the change, which is added tothe long list of new features in iOS 14, is available now. However, you will probably have to wait for each manufacturer to update to be able to benefit from this improvement. Perhaps partnerships will be announced between now and the keynoteiPhone 12?
