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pzo 4 hours ago

It's interesting that apple released 3rd party Wi-Fi Aware SDK for iOS and iPadOS but no for MacOS...

praseodym 4 hours ago | parent [-]

MacOS doesn’t have a gatekeeper status in the Digital Markets Act (DMA), so Apple doesn’t need to provide it. This shows that they only provide the SDK because of regulatory pressure, and try to maintain their vendor lock-in where possible.

manquer 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Not necessarily, Since 2015 launch NAN has been vaporware outside android, nobody else support it. Windows does not do so today either [1].

In Linux iw and the new cfg80211 NAN module has support for some hardware. There are few chips in desktop/laptop ecosystem that have the feature, but it is hard to know which ones today, it is more common not to have support than to.

AFAIK no major distros include UI based support that regular users can use. Most Chromebooks do not have the hardware to support, ChromeOS[2] did not have support OOB, so even Google does not implement it for all their devices in the first place.

For Apple to implement is easier than Microsoft or Google given their vertical control, but not simple even if they wanted to. They may still need a hardware update/change and they typically rollout few versions of the hardware first before they announce support so most people have access to it, given the hardware refresh cycle it is important for basic user experience which is why people buy Apple. What is the point if you cannot share with most users because they don't have latest hardware? Average user will try couple of times and never use it again because it doesn't "work".

Sometimes competing standards / lack of compliance are political play for control of the standards not about vendor lock-in directly. Developers are the usual casualties in these wars, rather than end users directly. Webdevs been learning that since JScript in the mid 90s.

All this to say, as evidences go this is weak for selective compliance due to regulatory pressure.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2284386/...

[2] I haven't checked recently