A Dime a Dozen

It depends on Region. But Generally speaking Google is still the best, and Apple is (only) good enough for certain places.* I was searching for news on iPhone NFC-F / Suica, ( Simply the best NFC tech there is and has been for the last 20 years and still have not picked up stream due to various stupid reasons ) I stumpled upon https://atadistance.net/ * I dont know the site owner nor affiliate with it. It basically explain in details how crap the Apple Map in Tokyo are. And it is the same in many other places in SEA Region. My guess is that most part of EU aren't any better. Edit: I am not sure if anyone on HN can shine any light on the process. Why do Apple buy data from third party sources and not at the same time create their own? And if Google buy data sources as well?

The At a Distance blog has extensively covered Apple Maps' deficiencies (and progress) in Japan where Yahoo maps is the best option. https://atadistance.net

People have been hoping that Google opts for global NFC capability but Pixel4 disappointed everyone on that regard. Sony and NTT Docomo have a stranglehold on the Android ecosystem. No JP NFC supporting android phone ever has more than 3 LTE bands. The only unlocked Android phone that isn't crippled is Oppo's Reno A, and that's an expensive middle range Qualcomm SoC, which is slower than Apples 3 year old devices. Apples iOS presence in Japan is VERY well executed. For reference: https://atadistance.net/ https://www.reddit.com/user/FelicaDude/comments/ EDIT: kinda curious why there are so many downvotes. There isn't anything factually wrong about this post.

QR codes are not good for high throughput situations, like subway gates although: https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do-qr-codes-… But China is in love with the QR code, so who knows how many years or decades it will take them to make their subway gates use fast NFC payments.

Indeed. Yahoo Japan Maps is the best maps and transit solution in Japan and it just got even better: https://atadistance.net/2017/05/02/yahoo-japan-map-v5-review/

Only because Western-centric systems don't handle non-LTR text properly. https://atadistance.net/2019/10/20/japanese-text-layout-for-the-future… > Baseline font metrics will never deliver great CJK typography because there are too many limitations. > > This is why InDesign J implements virtual body metrics based on Adobe proprietary table information for true high-end Japanese layout. There is no virtual body standard digital font metric standard so everybody implements the missing stuff on the fly and everybody does it different. Unfortunately the irony of it all is that Adobe played a huge role in how these limitations played out in the evolution of digital fonts, desktop publishing (DTP) and the situation we have today. I have a Kobo reader which supports both ePub 2 and ePub 3, and IIRC you need ePub 3 in order to get proper RTL/top-to-bottom text and Japanese typesetting, as well as proper comics support (if you buy an ePub 3 manga, it'll properly flip the page turn direction and the progress bar; a CBZ or other format won't). But most other readers I run into don't understand ePub 3 properly.

It's very easy to ascribe all these problems to a "general" Japanese incompetence with technology, but I don't think that this simplified explanation stands up to scrutiny. Japan was a world leader in many fields during the 80s and 90s, and even up until the late 00s, Japan was considered to be a leader in areas like Mobile Internet (this mobile internet was quite crummy in practice, but it was better than what was available on western feature phones at that time). Even today, there are many pieces of Japanese technology are quite impressive. It's not just toilets, and in fact they are not unique to Japan anymore: you can easily get your hand on equivalent washlets in China and Korea as well, even if they are not as ubiquitous in public spaces. Public transit payment still beats any other large country I've been to: FeliCa-based IC cards are standardized and accepted almost everywhere, they are faster than MiFare-like cards[1] and you can easily recharge them on your phone (the situation on Android is less than ideal, with almost no support on international models and the somewhat typical corporate low-quality botch job that is Osaifu Keitai[2] - but it still works). Vending machines are still world-leading and many of them (though not all) support digital payment through IC cards, iD or QUICPay. Digital payment on highways with ETC is fast and reliable, even if it's not the best system out there. I feel like Japan has an industry-wide problem with software (especially in…

> but then based on my personal experience as print media designer the likes of InDesign are full of various special tricks (and language-specific, too) That seems to concur with an informative article by AtaDistance from 2019 that I read the other day [0]: > ... > The result was InDesign 1.0 J which shipped in early 2001. InDesign J was the first, and only, major software application developed outside of Japan that followed the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X4051 typesetting and composition specification (the kumihan “bible”) and traditional Japanese print production methods. > I have covered some basics of Japanese layout before, but a review is helpful for first time readers. I’ll use a mix of my material and McCully’s presentation to explain. > ... > Western created DTP layout is graphics-driven and calculated by margins and font baselines. The western baseline typography model and font metrics is how PostScript and OpenType fonts, and all layout engines evolved. Adobe was well acquainted with the shortcomings of their own font technology and InDesign J got around the problems by adding proprietary Kanji virtual body font metrics and Japanese line break algorithms. None of this exists as an open standard that benefits everybody. > That is fine for InDesign and print production, but web layout and typography via CSS is an entirely different world. There are 3 huge obstacles for good vertical Japanese typography on the web: > * No font metrics for virtual…

It's working now (https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-recharge-ios17… and has been working since ~2023. The last hurdle many face is that if you disable location services, sometimes the transaction is still blocked as they can now geofence it to just Japan with foreign bank cards.

Well I've seen some other writeups like https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-why-gate-spe… that have also been referenced on HN. Discussions like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38694411 and others that are probably easy to search for. While some people have a reflexive dislike for AI output, I've done maybe a hundred o3 Deep Research queries now and found the reports to be generally high quality as well sourced as most human generated ones. I shared this one since I think it was a particularly interesting review the various systems around the world (I've personally used all those transit turnstiles personally and am generally familiar w/ RFID/NFC/EMV systems and didn't spot anything egregious). (I find Deep Research reports to on average be high signal to noise than most of the human tokens being output on sites like HN for example.)

If you're alluding to an Apple watch, it has Felica support wherever you buy it. PS: For anyone in doubt https://atadistance.net/2017/09/12/iphone-x-keynote-global-felica/

The MIFARE protocol (which Oyster cards use) takes 300ms to 500ms per tap. EMV (i.e. contactless cards) take ~500ms, which slows down normal walking speed. Here's a good summary of NFC protocols used for transit gates: https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-why-gate-spe… The Felica standard is fastest at 100ms per tap, and is used in Japan (e.g. Suica card) and Hong Kong (Octopus card).

Have other protocols somehow updated and made this chart[0] obsolete? [0] https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-why-gate-spe…

As far as I know, you still can't tap to pay with e.g. a Pixel unless you bought it in Japan or it was flashed with a JP image. https://atadistance.net/2023/10/05/the-state-of-pixel-global-nfc-suppo…

https://atadistance.net/2023/08/01/how-long-will-the-suica-card-shorta… Interesting, I was not aware of this. Good to know as I have some relatives coming over this week. And yes, like most digital cash in japan it's usually heavily walled garden. You can only charge your Suica or buy ticket with JR East's View credit card :) To their credit though, IC cards work very well but seems like you were unfortunate with the chip shortage.

Really? Interesting! I tried with at least two different EU (Swedish) visa cards back in July and none of the cards I had worked. Not in Japan anymore otherwise I would have tried again. This article, linked to from a sibling comment here, seems to indicate it shouldn't work for you :) https://atadistance.net/2023/07/15/foreign-visa-cards-blocked-for-japa… edit: ha. you read the same articles better than I did.

A rumor story is that Visa (and SMBC, big bank) blocks charging to Suica because they installing their open loop transit system https://atadistance.net/2023/07/15/foreign-visa-cards-blocked-for-japa…

Yeah, I really doubt that would be issue for more than few days, any source to this wild claim? Only thing I could find is that foreign cards might not work in some online payments or mobile payments, which is quite normal everywhere in world, but giving bold statement that your foreign card is useless and you can't even withdraw money from ATM seems like spreading fake news. https://atadistance.net/2022/09/19/foreign-visa-cards-blocked-for-japa…

This article https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-why-gate-spe… claims that the Japanese technology is faster than the EMV contactless. I guess EMV is more convenient if you already have the cards though.

Even for Apple, the most profitable smartphone OEM, it took them many years and so much engineering effort to make it work. They started with iPhone 7 JP edition, next their "Global NFC" iPhone X,8 series was pretty much a failure[1]. I can see why Android OEMs don't want to pursue providing solution to a technology that isn't widely adopted, is expensive to implement and has minimal user base [1] https://atadistance.net/2021/10/13/a-iphone-x-nfc-failure-story-for-th…

https://atadistance.net/2020/09/15/pixel-4-felica-outside-of-japan-hid… So it isn't; all phones have the hardware. However, it seems something blocks the FeliCa apps from running on non-Japanese phones. It could be just a region flag. (Don't trust customer support sites for technical information; the people writing those don't know how the real hardware works)

No idea this person's track record (nor the record of the japanese writer being cited) but this site asserts that all iPhones 7 have the same NFC chip and that a future iOS version (11?) will enable it worldwide. https://atadistance.net/2017/04/03/iphone-7s-taking-felica-worldwide/

1. Today we have 4 browser implementors. Only one of them doesn't also own an operating system (FF). We lost opera year or two ago. I would argue that a significant factor in this shrinking landscape is the fact that Apple has locked away ~10% of the market forever (and this 10% is not a random sampling - it includes many high value customers). Sure implementing a browser is technically challenging - my argument is that Apple's policy has altered the environment in such a way that there is no longer any reward for overcoming that challenge unless you have an operating system or some other large interest that requires you to make a browser. This will have effects on the web as a platform for years to come. You are wrong. I get you’re making a political argument because you have something against Apple, but what you’re suggesting is just wrong on the merits. Apple’s global iPhone marketshare is around 15%; it’s 35-40% in the US. When the W3C was going to shove XHTML 2 down our throats, where you had to have perfectly conforming XML markup to have a valid webpage, Apple helped form with Mozilla and Opera, the WHATWG that lead to HTML5 and web standards that made sense. It was Apple that said no to shipping Flash on the iPhone, which was the beginning of the end for proprietary media plugins. You seemed to forget about the ecosystem of open source developers that have lead the charge on implementing new open standards; Igalia was obviously able to work with Apple (and…

Desktop publishing, especially after the release of the LaserWriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter It used to be really hard to get printer output to look the same on the page as what you saw on the screen, and the small details matter when people are laying out a complicated magazine (or whatever) page and need text to flow around images and other design elements. There was a whole Adobe-vs-everyone battle over things like outline (as opposed to bitmap) font technology since they controlled the standard for PostScript fonts as used by printers like LaserWriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts#Type_1 Then Apple created TrueType, and it is the biggest feature of System 7 that I never see anyone talk about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType Then still lots of back and forth over things like Adobe's multi-master fonts vs TrueType GX which despite being part of the "failed" QuickDraw GX actually lives on in OpenType today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts https://atadistance.net/2016/09/20/truetype-gx-model-lives-on-in-opent… https://tidbits.com/1994/09/26/preliminary-practical-primer-to-quickdr… --- e: "magazine page" is what always comes to mind because it makes me think of the Diehard GameFAN story: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/gamefan/GameFAN.htm "he calls the layout artist (which was probably Jacob Riskin or George Weising at the time), 'my trusty [Macintosh] Quadra operator'.…