[brookst]

Phone-to-phone is probably better handled over WiFi and its variants. Simpler, easier to integrate, much less regulatory oversight.

Apple’s AWDL is hacky and ugly in lots of ways, but has been in market for a decade or more and enables phone to phone. If WiFi forum ever gets WiFi direct 2 off the ground it could be amazing.

But phone to phone is chicken and egg; users aren’t demanding it because there aren’t any killer apps, and there aren’t any killer apps because problems like identity, privacy, resiliency haven’t been solved, and those problems haven’t been solved because users aren’t demanding these apps.

[lxgr]

Fully agreed. This seems like the exact type of thing that Apple should be able to break out of, like they did with AirDrop (yeah, there was Bluetooth OBEX before, but it was too slow/clunky to be very useful on most phones) and AirPlay (same story vs. Miracast over WiFi Direct).

Yet the only recent movement in that area was them cutting down on AirPlay to unknown contacts, reportedly due to governmental pressure.

So unfortunately I believe that there is just no interest of Apple to make any move there, despite being in an excellent position: iMessage would solve most problems of spam, discoverability etc. (they could make it so that you can only message preexisting contacts when offline).

[astrange]

AWDL was replaced by the WiFi NAN/Aware standard.