Nice piece from Jason Snell about some cool new short distance wireless technology to replace or at least greatly augment Bluetooth.

Across various podcasts last week, there was a great deal of speculation that Apple withheld a tile-like beacon device because the technology wasn’t ready (remember AirPower, they said).

But an Apple tile wouldn’t be terribly useful without a vast and scattered set of devices able to link them to the Internet. So an equally plausible reason (and not a last minute decision) to delay such a tile would be to wait until there were idk maybe 50 million Ultra Wideband capable iPhones in the world instead of basically zero. Not to mention third party IoT type gadgets.

So maybe don’t get too excited until next September. Which also leaves time for Apple to extend Ultra Wideband into any iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, HomePods, etc.