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Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

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461–470 of 599 posts

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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it may be a helpful perspective - I don't care if I phone one's room phone or cell phone; but texting/messaging is a completely different mode of communication than a phone call to begin with. Texting, like messaging and email, are async whereas phone is sync. For 99% of my communication, I don't need to talk to somebody right now (and they don't need to talk to me right now :). I don't care if other party has a c…

Not that I don't understand the difference between the communication modes, mostly just empathizing with the parent. Personally I hate text because most people will reply with one or 2 word answers and it takes much longer to get a decision vs a minute phone call. In collage my reasoning was purely financial and this was the beginning of the mass adoption wave. I can only guess that the pressure to conform is so much…

Agreed; with text, and possibly since the days of BBM, there's also the personal pet peeve when a simple answer is spread across 7 individual messaged :D

I think some counter movements are already seen; and more mainstream, people are trying to learn how to limit / constrain their phone interactions. Part of the problem is that our labeling is horrible outdated - it's not actually the "Phone" part of the rectangular device that's usually the problem, it's the "massively powerful computer and media consumption device" part :D

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boom mic is always the superior choice.

In an absolute sound quality sense, yes. But they also pick up peoples' gross mouth noises. You hear them chewing food, wheezing when they have a cold, or even eating food in waaaaay too much detail. Obviously mute buttons exist but... I've had multiple remote coworkers with boom mics and even if they rememeber to mute 90% of the time over the course of a year that other 10% really adds up lol

The solution to that problem is not a better microphone, the solution to it is noise-canceling software. It filters out something like 95% of gross mouth noises, and 99% of stupid background noises (Cars, fans, ACs, etc.)

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

#463
I used to serve on a BT SIG, and the current state of things does not surprise me. I was both blown away by the technical expertise of some of the contributors, from whom I learned a ton about platform philosophy & standards that I still use today; and deeply disappointed by the role PMs & BizDev played in proactively breaking compatibility just to preserve the option to someday take advantage of the standard for short-term profit.

Really interesting though, if you're early in your career and have the option to participate in a standards body I strongly recommend it.

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always assumed this is a bug. Why isn't it just resuming from whatever you were last listening to? And why is this still an issue after so long? This is one of those things that Steve Jobs would have fired people on the spot for.

Perhaps I am lucky but my Subaru does resume whatever I was last listening to. Although it seems to prioritize the itunes app over podcasts for some reason so even if I had been listening to a podcast there is a chance it will play whatever was last up in itunes. :/

Same. I have an Acura and it plays whatever the last thing that was playing out the speakers or headphones of the phone was. If that was Apple Music, that's what plays. If it was Podcasts, that's what plays. For many years, I used a 3rd party podcast app, and it would play that.

It does, however, have the same connection problems described in the root of this thread. Sometimes just doesn't see the car (or vice-versa). Sometimes connects and starts playing within a minute of starting the car. Sometimes (frequently) stops playing after like 1 minute of playing. Sometimes auto-reconnects a minute later, sometimes doesn't. It's very irritating.

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

#465
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you're saying that a 3.5mm port cannot be waterproof, yet the stupid Apple proprietary power/data port can ?

Lightning is anything but stupid. It’s small, has no breakable bits in the phone side of the port, and is pretty ubiquitous. I don’t have to worry about whether this cable and charger support the Lightning 2-a (IIV) Gold standard ala USB-C. USB-C just felt terrible to me when I had a Nexus 5x. Port wasn’t as secure, cable was huge. Not a fan. Some people wreck the 1st-party cables abnormally quickly; they should buy…

It's stupid in that it has exposed pins. It's stupid in that its proprietary. It's stupid in a lot of ways. It's not not stupid because you like it.

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

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airpods do one thing much better than anything else I've tried: work with an iPhone. I went through a few other pairs of bluetooth "true wireless" ear buds and every single one of them would exhibit the normal bluetooth problems. Sometimes one wouldn't connect. Sometimes both wouldn't connect. Sometimes trying to resolve this I'd "forget" them and then not be able to pair them again necessitating pulling out the…

This. I am honestly bewildered when I see the tech press comparing true wireless earbuds to AirPods and not mentioning the enormous ergonomic differences.

Bluetooth experiences will be largely software-dependent. Comparing Airpods on a Macbook to a Windows laptop and some Sony earbuds? It's no contest, Airpods will win every time. If we're, say, testing the Airpods on Windows and the Sony buds on Linux (where they have LDAC support), the tables will be completely turned. All of these headphones are context-sensitive, and will behave differently on different hardware. You're not exactly writing a novel thesis here.

Airpods are still just Bluetooth with an extra chip for NFC pairing. All of the "magic" your Airpods provide are software-based, not part of the actual hardware you're buying. I think Tech Press is totally justified to ignore software that isn't part of the headphones itself.

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

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly shocked how good of a job Apple did on their AirPods. When they first came out I thought it was an expensive gimmick, but when they released the Pro's I bought in and they became my favorite Apple product of all time. At least for me, the reliability of the connection as well as being able to do a quick "handoff" from my iPhone to my Mac to take a call is a gamechanger. Also the spacial audio feature is…

I've heard consistent excellent things about AirPods in terms of connectivity and listening experience for the owner :) Let me be the annoying one to say that they can negatively contribute to a team meeting experience (which fair enough, isn't what they're designed for - but what many people use them for, not just in a pinch but as primary day-long mechanism). There's only so much software can do to mitigate the fac…

I keep a cheap set of wired headphones to use when I call people. I've used them when calling tech support on site somewhere. I probably looked dumb in the airpods age, but they work so much better than anything else. I'd use headphones from the $5 store before real airpods.

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

#468
post #56

Let me pass on to you some ancient Chinese... er, German engineering wisdom: He who understands wireless communication uses cables.

I worked on a wireless network management product for ~5 years, integrating with multiple vendors, and I'm putting fiber in my walls later this year

"If you can get a wired, use a wire.." Tech support advice I've given for at least a decade. It's amazing how often people end up being concerts to my way of thinking after a little bit. Wires don't have interference, they don't randomly not work (or much less, I have seen that). They have way more individual bandwidth. They are better in every way.

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

#469
post #185

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

Similar thing would happen in my Toyota, the song 'Afraid' by Yellowcard would play every time I turned on the car. Realized it was playing the first song in my library. In Apple Music there is a song called 'A a a a a Very Good Song (Silent Track)' by artist Samir Mezrahi, that contains 10 minutes of silence. I added that to my library and now that song plays when I turn on my car (although this autoplay only happen…

My car does this too! Except the first song in my library is A Christmas Festival by Boston Pops Orchestra.

The song has a dramatic opening, to say the least.

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

#470
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why the hell is it autoplaying in the first place? Does apple really hate their customers/users so much that they can't make this an option? That's completely insane. The more I learn about apple, the more I see extremely hostile UI decisions for literally no reason

I've always assumed this is a bug. Why isn't it just resuming from whatever you were last listening to? And why is this still an issue after so long? This is one of those things that Steve Jobs would have fired people on the spot for.

If you are listening to Spotify and accidentally engage with a video on Facebook, after the video plays, your device will be completely silent. “Now Playing” will be blank. If you press Play it will resume from whatever was last playing … in Music.app!

If you have a HomePod playing your family member’s music, say “Hey Siri, pause” because a phone call came in, and then “Hey Siri, play,” it will start playing wherever _your_ music.app last left off.

User intention is a really tricky problem! But a cynical thought would be “why would Apple fix a bug that causes people to use Music.app more?”

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