Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?

The problem I have are the parts where they are not top of their game, ie earbuds. If your only requirement is good call quality then their products can be titled best if paired with ie iphone. But I don't care about that at all. I bought ones which sound for music significantly better than airpods pro, have much better battery life (also their case has better battery for recharging and overall stamina). When yet better ones come (or I lose mine), I will go again for the best within my budget, easily from another manufacturer since brand loyalty is rather meaningless fluff for me, only quality of specific product matters.

But - I can't connect them to any apple product via high quality variations of codecs. So instead of using aptX HD to play my flacs in phone, I would have to resort to some basic implementation and effectively cut off some quality of those flacs. I am sure some wouldn't mind, but I do.

Hence you do shopping around, because in +- apple price bracket you have tons of options for quality hardware, be it notebooks, tablets, different headphones and so on.

This opinion doesn't take into account things like apple's stand on privacy on phones, which for many puts them above rest of the market. Suffice to say for me its more a case of clever marketing than actual proper security of such an important device, especially since I am not an US person and some US laws see me as sub-human, thus US 3-letter agencies act accordingly. But maybe I am completely wrong on this part, it would actually be great since I am already spending same dollars, just for other brands. Just haven't seen a single solid proof of that, and quite a few in contrary.

As a result, saying "let's invent a better Bluetooth" contains a hidden trap: it requires reinventing that really good core, which is probably really expensive, which then would not leave much to build better app profiles and we would end up with a similar problem.

We should not be inventing a better Bluetooth but fixing the app profile certification. I'm not sure what the right solution there is.

Notice that everything appears to be there: very detailed specs and information about testing. However, when you try to implement one of these specs you quickly realize that you cannot do it with the spec alone. You need example code, base implementations, test suite software and test data to build conformant software. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth SIG hides these resources behind a membership wall. Guess what happens then? You get lots of implementations of these specs that are a little bit off and don't handle all edge cases.

If I were to wave a magic wand I would like to see Bluetooth SIG change to a donation based financial model and for them to make all resources freely available. Right now they make money from branding, certification and country club membership fees. No wonder the ecosystem is one big tire fire.