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Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

cnn.com

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Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#31

Post by matsemann »

dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #24
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

People seem to complain a lot about Bluetooth, yet I owned dozens of devices of all vintages and they all played nicely with each other, except for a cheapo pair of MPow earbuds off Amazon. I even managed to transfer old school photos off my ancient 2003 NEC flip phone to my current Android phone even though the former uses Bluetooth 1.1 and the latter 5.1. I also fondly remember using Bluetooth in school to transfer…

Yet every month my Apple AirPods stop connecting with my Apple iPhone, until I hard reboot the iPhone. And a $70 Bluetooth headset that wouldn’t connect to a brand new Apple laptop until I restarted it 4 times, rebooted the Mac twice, and toggled the pairing mode about 8 times. And Bose headsets that don’t connect to iPhone for 2-3 attempts.

I sometimes wonder if it's almost deliberate incompetence on Apple's side, to make it seem even more lucrative to buy everything from them. My GF and I sometimes switch/borrow each other earphones and other gear, and she has loads of problems connecting to her Mac or iPhone. Like the Sony MX3000 something she has to reconnect every half an hour or they will be out of sync with the show she's watching on her laptop by a second or so. But for me never issues like that on Android/Dell.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#32

Post by t_mann »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #26
dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet every month my Apple AirPods stop connecting with my Apple iPhone, until I hard reboot the iPhone. And a $70 Bluetooth headset that wouldn’t connect to a brand new Apple laptop until I restarted it 4 times, rebooted the Mac twice, and toggled the pairing mode about 8 times. And Bose headsets that don’t connect to iPhone for 2-3 attempts.

That sounds more like an Apple Bluetooth stack issue at their OS level rather than something wrong with the Bluetooth chip/tech itself. It's where you should complain to Apple or ask for refunds/replacements. Granted, Apple is not alone here since both Google and Microsoft really botched their Bluetooth stacks on their OSs. Especially Google who hasn't learned you can't treat your C driver/embedded SW like front-end…

'It's not Bluetooth's fault, everyone is just using it wrong' does not sound good.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#33

Post by tgv »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #8

I do find it a frustrating technology. As the article says, pairing can be quite hit and miss. I generally have to search how to pair devices when I have to set it up on a new device, even for devices I've had for years! They're all different, and it can be unreliable. I have read that it suffers the interoperability issues because the spec is complex with many optional bits in it, although I don't know how true that…

I only have problems on a (cheap-ish) Android tablet. It often keeps asking "pair?" until you go into the settings and pair there, except directly after booting. I have the feeling it's not so much "the technology", but rather bad chips, lousy drivers and a 'lacking' integration in the OS.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#34

Post by darkwater »

kristopolous wrote: post #30
heavyset_go wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every printer sold in the last decade supports IPP Everywhere, which has robust support on Windows, macOS, Linux, *BSD, ChromeOS, Android, and anything that can run CUPS. It's completely driverless, too.

And oh man does it have issues. Oftentimes you have to do SNMP. Take scanning for instance, many devices will just give you compressed JPEGs over their HTTP interface without any option for choosing otherwise Now they'll claim you can specify it a variety of ways such as picking the document type, but they'll just ignore you. I forget all the permutations but I tried them all. I've had to reverse engineer their windo…

> And oh man does it have issues. Oftentimes you have to do SNMP. Take scanning for instance, many devices will just give you compressed JPEGs over their HTTP interface without any option for choosing otherwise

Just one data point (mine) but I have one of the cheapest HP Deskjet you can buy with scanner included, it works smoothly, no actions needed via wifi with Linux, I can set the DPI, save it as PNG or PDF, it's wonderful.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#35

Post by gfrff »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

People seem to complain a lot about Bluetooth, yet I owned dozens of devices of all vintages and they all played nicely with each other, except for a cheapo pair of MPow earbuds off Amazon. I even managed to transfer old school photos off my ancient 2003 NEC flip phone to my current Android phone even though the former uses Bluetooth 1.1 and the latter 5.1. I also fondly remember using Bluetooth in school to transfer…

My $400 Bose headphones have worse range than my cheap MPow headphones. Perhaps whatever great thought Bose puts in doesn't result in great products....

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#36

Post by ChildOfChaos »

The annoying thing I have with bluetooth, is with my headphones, I connect them up, set them as the sound source and just..... nothing.

I have to go round all of my devices and disable the bluetooth on them, because some other device is connected too and although that is not playing any sound at all, somehow has priority and doesn't allow any sound to be played by any other device.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#37

Post by oynqr »

matsemann wrote: post #31
dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet every month my Apple AirPods stop connecting with my Apple iPhone, until I hard reboot the iPhone. And a $70 Bluetooth headset that wouldn’t connect to a brand new Apple laptop until I restarted it 4 times, rebooted the Mac twice, and toggled the pairing mode about 8 times. And Bose headsets that don’t connect to iPhone for 2-3 attempts.

I sometimes wonder if it's almost deliberate incompetence on Apple's side, to make it seem even more lucrative to buy everything from them. My GF and I sometimes switch/borrow each other earphones and other gear, and she has loads of problems connecting to her Mac or iPhone. Like the Sony MX3000 something she has to reconnect every half an hour or they will be out of sync with the show she's watching on her laptop by…

Judging from other comments, there are still lots of bluetooth problems even if all if your devices are Apple ones.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#38

Post by moomin »

ptx wrote: post #3

> Bluetooth is said to borrow its name from [...] Early programmers adopted "Bluetooth" as a code name for their wireless tech [...] Maybe the author should have at least glanced at Wikipedia to find out by whom this "is said" and who these "early programmers" are.

Honestly, I constantly criticize journalists for not going any deeper than Wikipedia, but this author is staying well out of even the shallow end of the pool.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#40

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

t_mann wrote: post #32
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like an Apple Bluetooth stack issue at their OS level rather than something wrong with the Bluetooth chip/tech itself. It's where you should complain to Apple or ask for refunds/replacements. Granted, Apple is not alone here since both Google and Microsoft really botched their Bluetooth stacks on their OSs. Especially Google who hasn't learned you can't treat your C driver/embedded SW like front-end…

'It's not Bluetooth's fault, everyone is just using it wrong' does not sound good.

I mean, if I give you a hammer, and you use it to drive nails by hitting them with the handle, then it's not really the hammer's fault, is it?

What makes complex tech components like Bluetooth any different?

Also, Bluetooth isn't a single product made by a single company that dictates the standard and has the golden implementation.

To have Bluetooth audio between your phone and you PC for example, you can have different Bluetooth chips on each device, each with its own different firmware, then the OS on your PC and phone has a different driver and stack that interfaces to the Bluetooth chip and then there's the antenna design which links the two Bluetooth chips via the air. All these pieces need to come together in perfect harmony for you to enjoy seamless audio between two device.

If any of the manufacturers fucked up the antenna design, or the firmware on the chip, or the driver/stack on the OS, then your entire experience can fall apart and testing/debugging these thousands of permutations of various different pieces is nearly impossible. That's why Apple usually goes their own route towards proprietary tech they can fully control over the entire stack.

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