Unless the iPhone is jailbroken it is completely locked down by apple.
No expandable memory
Proprietary charging cables
proprietary accessories
Tied to iTunes
Developers make less profit
Overpriced
Over rated
the list goes on…
In fairness, the iPhone is a well designed, robust and intuitive piece of kit; and of course both Android phones and iPhones have their advantages and disadvantages but until apple remedy ALL of their failings, currently in my opinion Android wins especially for this community.
I know some of you iBandwagon peeps have an android purely for biohacking purposes, but you should, from time to time ask yourself, what advantages do I REALLY get from iPhone…
I agree with your points, I just don’t have the stamina to stay angry at Apple or it’s customers any more. Apple has just become another enduring problem in the tech world, one you just have to deal with and shake your head. iPhone’s popularity is like drinking and driving. It doesn’t need to be like that, but watching from the outside we just need to account for it and move on. And sometimes they make business decisions that feel like someone driving through your living room at 3am.
Some good news though, Apple is a diminishing proportion of the smartphone market. Here is a relatively up-to-date analysis that indicates iPhones are ~53% of the market in North America, and less elsewhere. It’s been a long time coming, but tides are changing.
I attempted to make an apple ID just to assist you in getting the word out. After going through all the steps it came back at me with
“your account cannot be created at this time” once I entered the email confirmation code. Kinda salty. I’ll try again later
Yeah I completely understand Android has way more advantages than IPhone I had just decided to get one because I’ve had android for so long and Jailbroken iPhones are pretty alright. I want to upgrade from my iPhone X to a Galaxy 10 or a Pixel or something. If anyone figures out a way to use the spark on maybe even just a Jailbroken iPhone you’ll save me a lot of trouble.
I don’t have a VivoKey spark but rather the NFC ring DT sells. I can use the Apple shortcuts app to program a limited number of commands to it and I’ve even seen an option to run python scripts via a shortcut fo Pythonista and so I’m thinking there’s a lot of possibility with this release of iOS 13.
Can someone explain to me briefly what makes the VivoKey different than say the xNT? I’m unclear on what it means to be a cryptobionic chip.
The VivoKey Flex One is a chip that will be able to run applets on itself, enabling it to do active cryptographic calculations, like a credit card would. It may open the door to being able to pay with implants and to do many more complicated things than just pulling up a web page, handing out contact info, or opening a lock. (Currently in beta, Hopefully released soon)
The VivoKey Spark is simply an authentication tool. It basically serves as 2-factor authentication, ensuring it really is you logging into something as you need to tap something that is inside you to be able to log in. It CANNOT run the applets.
The xNT is simply an NFC chip that you can load with whatever data you want to be pulled up when scanned. It also outputs a UID that can be used to unlock things that it has been entered into.
@Jaroot did a fair job explaining, but I will just expand on it a bit… the Spark (and upcoming Spark 2) have cryptoprocessors inside and are able to perform encryption of data. This ability lets the VivoKey platform send a challenge to the chip through your phone via NFC and the chip will encrypt that challenge with a special cryptographic key that was loaded on to it by us during manufacture. The response is sent back to the VivoKey platform and after it is cryptographically verified, some action is taken. That action can be authentication or authorization. Authentication would be a kind of “logging in” whereas authorization could be confirming a bank transaction or some other intent, or even voting… like let’s say you need 3 out of 5 board members to vote on some action (could be a blockchain contract or just some voting submission API call)… the only way to confirm the vote would be to scan the chip when prompted for an affirmative vote. The power here is that nobody with access to your phone, devices, or account passwords could perform this action… only you can by way of chip scan. The VivoKey platform doesn’t even have usernames or passwords, just chip scan and profile PIN code (for registering new phones etc.)
By contrast, the xNT is simply a storage medium. You can write data to it and read it off. There is nothing that anyone would consider “secure” about it. If you store sensitive information on it, then it would be trivial to obtain that information and emulate it once obtained. This is why storing encrypted data on your xNT is pointless. You don’t have to be able to decrypt the data to be able to simply emulate it to whatever reader is expecting to read that data… the end result is the same… the reader thinks it is the xNT it is expecting.
An implant cannot be removed by a pickpocket. My iPhone and Apple Watch have biometric authentication before they can be used. Much more secure than my physical cards. This ring seems like something more akin to a card in that it can be removed and used by anyone. I just wonder if they will have security or biometrics of some sort. Doesn’t seem like it.
I’m waiting for the VivoKey project to come to fruition i suppose.
Amazing! I just read that iOS 13 now unlocks the ability for Apps to write to tags as well, that was one major thing lacking for me from iOS. Does anyone know if there are any iOS 13 compatiable Apps which are capable of writing at the moment or is it too early?
Nightwalker, I’ve been using my apple shortcuts app Automation button to enable NFC triggers. I’ve also played around with Simply NFC and Launch Center. All of them do the trick. I’m still tinkering around with my Proxmark but am having a hell of a time getting all the files to work with GitHub. Why can’t someone just make a damn executable file? Jesus Hussein Christ lol
I also upgraded to iOS 13 just last night and I played around with the new built-in Shortcuts App in combination with NFC stickers and implants, I played around with the new Scripting actions Apple have built in, it is incredible! I’m actually quite surprised at just how open Apple are being one, the scripting functions they have allowed access to are quite versatile.
I mean you can scan a tag now and your iPhone will SSH into another computer or server and execute a script, for those of us comfortable with writing the odd bash script then that certainly opens up a whole host of automation options!
It isn’t always the best option. I use both Windows and numerous Linux distros on a daily basis. If you have a user complaining about ease of use like the one you replied to then I hardly think suggesting they switch to Linux is the answer to their problems.
I’m sat on a Dell Latitude 5580 on my lunch break at the moment, it came with Windows 10 preinstalled (I don’t like Windows 10), it also has a built in NFC/RFID reader which worked beautifully out of the box with Win10. I have installed two different Linux distros on it and the reader doesn’t work under those straight away, not even after trying a couple of applications.
No doubt it’ll need a driver or two, I haven’t given it a real hard look yet, but just making a point that Linux may not always be the answer to everyones solutions and that is coming from someone who loves Linux.
Yup, I get where you’re coming from. I don’t really “like” Linux, Windows, or Mac. I didn’t elaborate, but I’m certainly not saying “Linux is the solution to all your problems”. I just pick whatever OS provides the path of least resistance for each task. In this particular case with the Proxmark software, it happened to be much easier to set up and use in a fresh Ubuntu install. You could even put it on a flash drive.
