When we talk about Apple’s achievements, I always include AirDrop in this list. The service debuted in macOS cross-platform. However, this was not resolved until years later with Yosemite, in 2014. Since then, Apple device users have had a quick and easy system to transfer assets between them, supposedly securely.

This is something I mentioned, I remember when Google announced the arrival of Nearby Sharing for Windows, providing an AirDrop-like experience for Windows and Android users, quite a successful move, but as I mentioned at the time, it was years away after Apple already had a feature for this purpose. However, from what I have seen, it seems to me I have to eat my words about AirDrop and give much more value to Nearby (which by the way will soon be renamed to Quick Share as we tell you here).

The surprise came at first when A Chinese forensic institute has published that they managed to crack AirDrop encryption and that they can subsequently gain access to user operations. For this reason alone, we face a huge problem. However, I have always maintained that security issues are inevitable and that what really matters is the response of the parties involved. This means that Apple should respond within a few hours by updating its operating systems to fix any flaws.

But is this security issue the reason I’m particularly critical of Apple today? No it is not. The reason for my particular anger is that while Chinese researchers claimed to have used this vulnerability to track users, we now know that Other security researchers already informed Apple about the AirDrop issue in 2019, according to CNN. This means that Apple had over four years to solve it, but they must have been too busy doing something else.

Knowing this, I couldn’t help but remember the problem with their operating systems using VPNs that we informed you about only a few months ago, or worse, the iOS specific problem with VPNs that Despite being identified in iOS 13, it had not yet been resolved when this report was published, just before iOS 16. Another notch that again directly attacks something that Apple has always excelled at, which is the security of its platforms and the protection of the privacy of its users.

Now everyone is demanding that Apple act as quickly as possible to fix the AirDrop issue, and I totally agree with those demands, but I think that once the issue is resolved, Cupertino would have to explain how this is possible that being aware of this security issue as of 2019 they still haven’t fixed it. Because I don’t know what you think, but it seems unacceptable to me.