Mighty angry aren’t we. 🙄
I rather am. Apple's business model is ruining the tech industry writ large. They're far more egregious than anything Microsoft ever did in the 90s, and Microsoft actually got smacked down. They've found a convenient and clever excuse for egregious behaviour that the legislators seem to be buying, despite the damage it is doing to the market and consumer choice. There's no evidence that any regulator or legislator, at least in North America, even seems to be cognizant of Apple's abuses. They are pushing us backward to a world of platform exclusivity, protectionism, and control rather than the one we were heading for in the early 00s with federated, standardized protocols and openness. There's no reason for there not to be a standardized messaging protocol that all services use (XMPP...), and the same for voice/video chat, file sharing, and a variety of other things.
Apple don’t owe anyone the secrets behind their technology. You might live in freetard utopia, but differentiation and successful ideas is what makes clever people money, and those inventions set apart the wheat from the chaff.

There are no secrets. AirDrop is not a difficult thing to implement. If Apple's goal was usability, they would want it to become a standard, so that they could interoperate with many devices, and the users would be the winners without having to worry about what kind of device each other has. Or even better, they would promote it as an actual standard with IETF or similar, and get it ratified as something anyone anywhere can easily implement and interoperate with. Instead, they protect it, and don't allow anyone else to interoperate with them to try and pressure everyone into their little bubble. It's the same thing with FaceTime. Or iMessage. Or a litany of other Apple-only things. They are nothing special, the fact that they are Apple-exclusive and often by far the least-friction solution (by virtue of being unconfigurable defaults) is purely leverage they use against you to hold you on their platform.
1: What a comical, idiotic name.
2: Only HOW many years too late?
3: It’s a crusty, clumsy effort and it’s never worked once for me (just like their proximity unlock for Chromebook)
1. Irrelevant. Like I said, you are clearly very susceptible to marketing. At least it clearly conveys its purpose.
2. Sure, but I have no idea how this refutes my point about Apple's protectionism harming consumers and actively harming the experience for their users in the interest of pushing people to their platform.
3. Eh, it just works for me. It's not exactly a hard thing to do, and considering your...bias...I'm not going to take your experience at face value.
The point is that it is open, and Apple can choose to implement it (like BT file transfer!) if they prioritized a good user experience, unlike Google implementing AirDrop which is not an option available to them. But they won't, because they are Apple and creating a world where tech interoperates well is not something they want to do. That would be good for consumers, and bad for locking them to Apple.
Check out this “guide” from Captain bullshit random Indian tech site: https://www.guidingtech.com/fix-nearby-sharing-not-working-on-android/
Mighty similar to
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/airdrop-not-working-fix/ ... These blogs exist to hoover search results from people trying to use this stuff, they are no indication of widespread problems.
If ya gonna fanboy, pick the winning side.

Says the person that comes into a thread about Android as an Apple fanboy and refuses to acknowledge that his favourite company is at least as predatory and anti-consumer as any other? That acts like anything that comes out of Apple's anus is gold-plated chocolate, despite the smell? That's so brainwashed they've come around to believe anyone that doesn't also love the smell must be an idiot, and happily and arrogantly expresses that attitude in public?
I'm no Android fanboy. It's a functional product, just like iOS, I am just very tired of people thinking that sunshine and rainbows emit from Apple's ass. They are one of the most predatory companies to ever exist. Be more critical of them.