Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by amelius » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:37 AM UTC

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…

The litmus test: can you and a friend listen to a single music stream with two BT headphones at the same time?

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

#112

Post by noisymemories » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

Ha anyone been able to deploy a better behaving protocol over the same ASICs/SoCs in so many years? I mean, I'm pretty sure no hardware or software vendor is remotely happy with the current status quo.

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

#113

Post by infinityplus1 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

badthingfactory wrote: post #73

Paul_S wrote: post #56

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

Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to save myself support calls, but it's also the printer I use in my own house.

Brother printers have regressed as well. See this post: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

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

#114

Post by blackhaz » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #100

blackhaz wrote: post #91

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…

There used to be a link to remove the album[1] but it seems like they shut it down. So the only way for you to remove the album from your account is to contact apple support. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540#:~:text=Apple%2... .

I also have an alarm set up I cannot delete. It says "pick up Matt from school." It migrated all the way from iPhone 7 to this X. But he has grown up since and I don't need to pick him up anymore. I'll include this in my request.

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

#115

Post by darkwater » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #45

darkwater wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Brother is one of the biggest offenders here I've found. I've also found an HP with an issue as well but I haven't diagnosed it. I'm typing this from my bed on a phone so sorry I don't have the references on me What's your model?

> What's your model?

HP DeskJet 2630, it's like 4 years old.

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

#116

Post by Certhas » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:40 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #69

nine_k wrote: post #54

I tried to learn why BT is still somehow painful to use, and the article basically does not have an answer. My take from comments here and my experience: - Makers of BT devices can't agree on many important common things (easy discovery / pairing mode, priority, etc), and have little incentive to seek agreement. It's like phone chargers before USB. - Makers of BT devices tend to cut corners and/or add not-entirely-st…

> It's like phone chargers before USB. No, it's like phone chargers before EU regulators stepped in.

That was my first association as well. This seems like a much much harder thing to regulate though...

For USB chargers industry had come up with a good solution but market failure meant there was no incentive to adopt it. That's text book regulation stuff. Here there doesn't seem to be a good proven solution out there that you could mandate...

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

#117

Post by oblio » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

badthingfactory wrote: post #73

Paul_S wrote: post #56

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

Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to save myself support calls, but it's also the printer I use in my own house.

I bought a wireless HP printer.

Besides the fact that I never printed anything from my phone.

It literally required reinstallation (not restart!) to print again, every time, on Windows.

It needed an HP account to be able to scan. Locally.

I just chucked it out and got a USB Brother.

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

#118

Post by oblio » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #108

The same holds for USB.

USB A? Nope, super reliable for 5 nines of users and use cases. With billions of users you still get millions of duds, but that's ok.

USB C is... Complicated.

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

#119

Post by bgribble » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #59

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…

Pairing is my main issue with the technology as I’m frequently using one device across multiple devices. The ideal for me would be latency free crystal clear audio that can fuse maybe four different simultaneous input streams, but since that’s likely impossible, I would just like to spend less time in the hell of trying to force my headphones to stop autopairing to the wrong device every time it turns on. Nobody offe…

Not bug-free, but I have used the Jabra Elite earbuds for a while now (75t and 85t) and they manage multiple-device connections pretty well. Up to 3 (I think) devices can be connected to the buds at the same time.

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

#120

Post by cnity » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

blackhaz wrote: post #114

rjzzleep wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a link to remove the album[1] but it seems like they shut it down. So the only way for you to remove the album from your account is to contact apple support. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540#:~:text=Apple%2... .

I also have an alarm set up I cannot delete. It says "pick up Matt from school." It migrated all the way from iPhone 7 to this X. But he has grown up since and I don't need to pick him up anymore. I'll include this in my request.

You have a gift for writing humorously.