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What went wrong with wireless USB

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Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#101

Post by palata »

miki123211 wrote: post #83
kmarc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is the same "problem". Most people (not the HN cohort) don't want to transfer "files", the abstraction of the file is either outdated for them or maybe even unnatural / unknown (younger generation). They might want to transfer (a better word: share) photos/videos, documents, etc. And for those they use specific apps and "the cloud". No "files" (for the sake of files), and barely any hierarchy of (folder…

Also, they want to use the same "abstraction" for "sharing photos with their friend when they're on holiday in another country" versus "sharing photos with that same friend when they just got back and are literally sitting next to each other." People don't really internalize that those are two different use cases. Yes there's Airdrop, but I think most people view it as more of a "discoverability" solution than a file…

I disagree. I find it condescending when techies say "the average user doesn't make the difference between sharing a file to a device next to them and sharing a file over the Internet".

Everybody, and I mean everybody is capable to understand that to connect their Bluetooth headset to their phone, they do it over Bluetooth. And that to connect to the Internet, they can either go over WiFi (which is "free") or cellular (which is less "free").

> People don't really internalize that those are two different use cases.

We actively keep them ignorant, and then we use their ignorance as a justification. I find it sad.

What if we said "People don't want to drive their car somewhere, they want to go from A to B. We should prevent them from learning how to drive so that they would have to pay for our taxis".

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#102

Post by palata »

afiori wrote: post #65
kmarc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is the same "problem". Most people (not the HN cohort) don't want to transfer "files", the abstraction of the file is either outdated for them or maybe even unnatural / unknown (younger generation). They might want to transfer (a better word: share) photos/videos, documents, etc. And for those they use specific apps and "the cloud". No "files" (for the sake of files), and barely any hierarchy of (folder…

I want to add something to this: abandoning the fire layer allows for richer custom flows (which to many are arguably worse) For example the file API does not allow a clean, uniform, and reliable way to associate a resource with some metadata

I don't get that. How do you expect to abandon the file layer on your OS? Do you plan on rewriting Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS with a fundamentally new philosophy?

If not, then you're not abandoning the file layer at all. You're just preventing people from benefitting from it.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#103

Post by LtWorf »

gruturo wrote: post #95
adrianN wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why IR is slow. Shouldn’t there be plenty of bandwidth available at those frequencies?

I'm frankly baffled at all these reports of IR being unreliable and slow. It... wasn't. Not for the file sizes of the day. I exchanged plenty of files back in the day, even at 115200bps a picture would be 2-3 seconds tops (pictures were small!). And when devices started supporting 4Mbps, even a large-ish MP3 would go in 5-6 seconds. All without setup or pairing, beautiful. Huge files (like full resolution pictures fr…

It would take me like 30 minutes to transfer 1MB.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#104

Post by palata »

tgv wrote: post #98
dist-epoch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which makes the value proposition a lot less clear. Wirelessly transferring files between a phone and a computer seems like a big use case. Still no easy standard way of doing it.

Airdrop works. Ok, it's platform bound, but I'm sure it could be ported. It's not such a big thing, though. I hardly use it, and young people don't seem to use it either. The stuff on their phone and laptop seem separate worlds, just like mine are. Might be because they don't know about it, though.

Because we keep them ignorant. We make sure they depend on our apps that they have to pay for. You wouldn't want them to know how to download music/movies without going through our paid streaming platforms, would you?

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#105

Post by palata »

znpy wrote: post #99

This post has unlocked the memory of seeing some Intel CEO demoing wireless power and connectivity for laptops. Basically you "just" put your laptop on your desk and it automatically starts getting power (similar to what phones can do nowadays) as well transmit video to a display (on the same desk). It's sad that went nowhere, it would have been very cool and something actually useful.

> it would have been very cool and something actually useful.

Less efficient, just for "cool". I think it's better to stick with cables.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#106

Post by m000 »

Could wireless USB be a case of "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? [1]

I.e. the effort was driven by the USB-IF [2] that happens to be more hardware than software oriented. So they were eager to deliver a solution based around a new chipset that could be adopted immediately by anyone interested.

This failed to account for adoption friction/lag, and the era of ARM-based SBCs and WiFi proliferation which was already dawning (e.g. iPAQ handhelds were available at the time [3]).

So, they ended up with most of their envisioned use-cases [4] being covered either by SBCs, or by Bluetooth. At least in retrospect, standarizing a pure software solution like USB over IP, as an added-value proposition for the USB standard, would have made more sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument#Abraham_...

[2] https://www.usb.org/about

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB#Uses

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#107

Post by phire »

miki123211 wrote: post #78
phire wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth had some early success in cellphones, mostly to support Bluetooth headsets and car radio integration, starting from about 1999. It could do other things, but the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days. Bluetooth didn’t really hit mainstream until the arrival of chipsets that multiplexed Bluetooth and WiFi on the same radio+antenna. My memory is that happened sometime around 2007-2010. At that…

> the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days Don't forget music piracy. At least over here, a lot of kids had phones that did Bluetooth, and the primary use case for it was sharing songs they liked with each other. You could use infrared (IRDA) for that, and some people did before Bluetooth was common, but it was much slower. This was mostly on low-end Nokias, maybe with a bit of Sony Ericsson thrown i…

By "early days", I was more thinking about the 1999-2005 era, before low-end Nokias even got Bluetooth and the ability to play MP3s.

The wireless headset was the killer app that drove bluetooth adoption within cellphones, driving down costs until eventually the lower-end models receiving it too. While sharing files was possible in the 1999-2005 era (especially with PDAs), most phones were lacking enough flash storage to store anything worthwhile.

While I don't want to say file sharing wasn't a killer app, it does seem to have been limited to just schools during a certain time period.

A time period that I missed out on by a few years. At high school, we did all our file sharing by swapping burned CDs. Then we switched to dragging around laptops and USB hard drives at university (and using the private emule network on the university wired ethernet).

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#108

Post by timthorn »

LtWorf wrote: post #103
gruturo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frankly baffled at all these reports of IR being unreliable and slow. It... wasn't. Not for the file sizes of the day. I exchanged plenty of files back in the day, even at 115200bps a picture would be 2-3 seconds tops (pictures were small!). And when devices started supporting 4Mbps, even a large-ish MP3 would go in 5-6 seconds. All without setup or pairing, beautiful. Huge files (like full resolution pictures fr…

It would take me like 30 minutes to transfer 1MB.

You were pretty unlucky. The basic bitrate was 9.6kbps but much higher speeds were common.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#109

Post by hnlmorg »

gruturo wrote: post #95
adrianN wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why IR is slow. Shouldn’t there be plenty of bandwidth available at those frequencies?

I'm frankly baffled at all these reports of IR being unreliable and slow. It... wasn't. Not for the file sizes of the day. I exchanged plenty of files back in the day, even at 115200bps a picture would be 2-3 seconds tops (pictures were small!). And when devices started supporting 4Mbps, even a large-ish MP3 would go in 5-6 seconds. All without setup or pairing, beautiful. Huge files (like full resolution pictures fr…

You’re either misremembering things or talking about an era after Bluetooth had already taken off.

In the days before Bluetooth, transferring MP3s over IR took multiple minutes, even on high end (for the time) handsets.

And the fact that you needed to keep line of sight during the whole process meant your phone couldn’t be used that whole time. Which was a real pain in the arse if you got a text message or phone call while trying to transfer a file.

IR was really more designed for swapping contacts. In fact that’s exactly how BlackBerry (or was it Palm?) marketed IR on their device: a convenient way to swap contact details. But you’re talking about a few KB vs several MBs for an MP3.

The tech has definitely moved on since. But then so has Bluetooth, WiFi and GSM et al too.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#110

Post by tossandthrow »

palata wrote: post #105
znpy wrote: post #99

This post has unlocked the memory of seeing some Intel CEO demoing wireless power and connectivity for laptops. Basically you "just" put your laptop on your desk and it automatically starts getting power (similar to what phones can do nowadays) as well transmit video to a display (on the same desk). It's sad that went nowhere, it would have been very cool and something actually useful.

> it would have been very cool and something actually useful. Less efficient, just for "cool". I think it's better to stick with cables.

Yep!

It would be a marginal. Improvement at a huge increase in complexity

Adjacent intention on the same action that leads to a connected computer, eg. I put my laptop on my friend table for storage, and it connects against my intention.

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