why is 'iBeacons' a meme?

I'm serious, is there any practical use of this things at all? It seems so pointless. Where are they being used and what for?
If I have to download and install special apps on my phone, and more annoyingly-- have the running all the time, just to get some ad when I'm near a McDonalds or something... that sounds way more headache than it's worth.

>>59208761
Because too many people have Bluetooth disabled on their phones to save battery.

It doesn't work if people have Bluetooth disabled.

OS makers need to give people option of having Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) enabled but non-LE regular Bluetooth disabled if they want iBeacon/ultra-local location beacon thing to take off.

>>59208926
The idea is that iBeacons can be used like extremely precise GPS inside buildings.

For example, theoretically, if iBeacons are installed correctly and the Maps app know where each iBeacons are, you can do things like asking the app where a specific shampoo is and the app can tell you whether to continue walking forward, turn left here, turn right here, until you arrive right in front of the shampoo you want.

>>59208965
Turns out, it's really difficult to calibrate the iBeacons to make the indoor location triangulation work without having a trained (i.e. expensive) pros with industrial GPS devices sweep the property, and you can't trust minimum wage workers to not move or knock over the iBeacons accidentally once installed.

>>59208761
if you need to transmit some kind of data with as little power as possible.

It's a botnet. We should create an app that sends malware to them and overwrites their firmware.