Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is about to become a reality TV star. If you’re curious to see what watching The Woz might be like when it airs, Starwood Hotels just shot a quick video of Woz demonstrating their SPG app to magically unlock his hotel room at the W in Hollywood.
The SPG app seeks makes hotel keys obsolete by giving visitors a Bluetooth key upon checkin within the app, allowing you to skip the front desk altogether and unlock your room with the iPhone 6’s new NFC chip. The new SPG keyless entry system has only been around for a month, but Woz says its so easy to use, you don’t even need someone to teach you what to do.
Watch Woz demo the keyless entry app in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sX1OklFjps
Starwood Hotels launched the keyless entry system at 10 hotels in New York, Hong Kong, LA, Berlin, and Doha last month. The hotel chain plans to bring SPG keyless to more than 150 Aloft, Element, and W hotels around the world by early 2015.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
11 responses to “Watch Steve Wozniak use iPhone 6 to magically unlock a hotel room”
This uses BLE if I’m not mistaken. Not NFC.
You are mistaken. The system was developed by lock Swedish lock manufacturer Assa Abloy. From their press release: “Supporting Bluetooth Smart and NFC, ASSA ABLOY Mobile Access is used with the company’s mobile-enabled locks and readers…”
He is actually not mistaken. NFC functionality in the iPhone 6 is currently limited to functions directly related to ApplePay. Much like Touch ID hardware/software features were unavailable to third party developers for roughly a year after its release, the iPhone 6’s NFC chip is in a monogamous relationship with Apple’s developer team for the time being. The mentioned setup is most likely using a Bluetooth LE powered system much like Kwikset’s Kevo deadbolt lock.
A man his size needs only lean upon the door
Making it that much easier for people to hack and break into your hotel room
Because it would be so easy to crack the AES encryption and cryptographic hash functions that this system uses, right?
But you can sleep easy in your hotel room knowing that your home is secured by locks with cut metal keys — a virtually impenetrable security barrier.
Hey… I’m not part of your “cult”. But I agree with you 100%. There is NO WAY this is less secure than keys or current key-card technology.
Cult? Huh? You got the wrong guy. I’m an atheist.
Oh? You’re not part of the “Cult of Mac”… you sure looked one of the followers. Sorry.
Just a reader, not a cultist.
I’ve owned everything from Zilog Z80-based CP/M systems with 64K of RAM to multicore AMD and Intel based systems running Windows, BSD, Linux, and OS X. My primary workstation is a Mac Pro and it’s an extremely well built system. But one can admire good engineering and build quality without being a member of a cult — or even a computer monogamist.
Tokenization way more secure than someone stealing your hotel key (which you would notice much later than when someone stole your phone which you can immediately wipe…)
Hopelessly ignorant about encryption, but every forum needs you guys for the entertainment!