camber

Interesting to see this here today because I got an email from Amazon about this earlier. 

Before everyone gets their skivvies is a twist, this is very likely an Amazon precursor to what Apple will do with AirTags. Amazon Sidewalk is all about providing a very low cost, low bandwidth, highly distributed, mesh network (using BTLE and 900 MHz) for locating and discovering identification tags and exchanging a few bits of data with simple sensors . It uses a small slice of each participants' WiFi bandwidth (1/40th with a hard monthly cap) as a backhaul to bridge sensor/tag data up to the cloud through your WAN connection. By meshing together all of the participants' data feeds they can achieve area wide coverage, i.e., several square miles. 

There's nothing inherently nefarious about what Amazon is doing, and if you don't like it, don't use it. When Apple rolls out their wide area coverage for AirTags you'll be able to decide whether you trust Apple more than you trust Amazon, and sign up with Apple to help facilitate the same sort of service. Or not. Nobody has to do anything they are not comfortable doing. Until we have some sort of third-party or governmental infrastructure in place to support these kinds of services, companies like Amazon, Apple, and Amazon (and others) will try to utilize whatever connectivity opportunities are available to them. Amazon Sidewalk is just the first of the opportunists to hot the street, or should I say, the sidewalk.

lkrupp said:
Absolute genius. Intel has to be grinding its teeth over this. And if they try to retaliate by slowing down the supply chain it will just accelerate Apple’s transition plan. It’s lose-lose for Intel, no doubt about it.
Intel is not going to do that. Their contract with Apple will include eye-watering penalties if they fail to deliver.
No, their biggest problem is that others might look at what Apple is doing and start wondering if they can do the same with an ARM chip and Linux.

The problem with that is that none of the other PC makers have the volume to drive the development of the chips not to mention they don't have the design skills to make those ARM chips.