My Favorite iOS 7 APIs Part 1: iBeacons and Multipeer Connectivity

Since Xamarin provides full native capabilities, developers don't need to wait for us to exploit iOS 7's awesome new APIs, such as:

  • iBeacon: This, to my mind, is the stealth API of the release. An iBeacon is a Bluetooth device (just iOS devices for now, but Apple says they'll release a Bluetooth profile for h/w manufacturers) that broadcasts a UUID (the UUID is intended to be shared between many devices, e.g., a store-chain will have a UUID and all their stores will broadcast it: new store's geofence works instantly). The UUID travels up to Apple and apps that monitor for that UUID get alerted when they enter a geofence around the beacon. Within the beacon's region, BT, not GPS, is used to indicate proximity. Pair that with…

  • Multipeer Connectivity: Ad Hoc messaging and data with none of the hassle. Broadcast a protocol string ("com.MyCompany.MyApp") and everyone in BT range or on the same WiFi network advertising their interest in that protocol string gets an alert and, boom!, you've got Birds of a Feather. (Whoever writes the "Fetish Friend Finder" app using iBeacon and MPC is going to retire early. Of course, there are only 2\^122 GUIDs, so you couldn't track every kink.) (UPDATE: A sample chat app I wrote )

iBeacons can be combined to create many actionable zones within a physical location:

Here's some Xamarin code