Watching the nearby networking video. They're so proud of integrating iOS and OS X in MC, but what I really need it MC for accessories. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I asked a lot about cross-platform support, or at least documenting the protocols, and it sounds like it just ain’t going to happen, for a combination of technical and political reasons. Reading between the lines, I think that there are highly-placed people at Apple who believe these technologies are competitive advantages and don’t want to see them adopted on other platforms like Android. That’s 1990s-Apple thinking at its worst. :(
Actually, to be precise there are at least four layers of stuff involved —
1. P2P WiFi without a base station. Totally Apple-proprietary. There’s an open equivalent called “WiFi Direct” but Apple’s not supporting it. 2. Routing over P2P WiFi or Bluetooth or regular WiFi as appropriate. I don’t think there’s any rocket science here. Apparently there’s a standard protocol for IPv6-through-Bluetooth tunneling. 3. Bonjour. This is and has always been open, and there are compatible libraries for other platforms, like Avahi. 4. MultiPeer Connectivity. The discovery part is simply based on Bonjour, but the TCP connections use an Apple proprietary protocol that’s not going to be opened up. I’ll bet it wouldn’t be terribly hard to reverse engineer, but I don’t know of anyone who’s tried.
—Jens
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