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iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

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Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#201

Post by jessecurry »

wiseowise wrote: post #140
websap wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have a problem with this. I want AirPods to be undeniably the best experience for me because I am fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, and I know many folks have complaints against that. I find it to be rather pleasurable to use compared to all the other alternatives out there. So if I have to start sacrificing my experience in favor of universal support, that really sucks.

Is there anything that makes you believe they'll sacrifice quality to have universal support?

They did their initial AirPod implementation in a pretty insecure manner because it was securely locked to their hardware and they could trust themselves to not be malicious. If they have to build a feature, plus all the security around it, plus documentation, etc… it makes it much harder to bring to market. They may opt to skip it in favor of something else.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#202

Post by tt24 »

Sayrus wrote: post #199
tt24 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are far more than two companies selling phones.

And yet if you want applications to work on your phone, many times you'll need approval from either Apple or Google. Google can effectively ban manufacturers (like they did with Huawei) from using "Android" by blacklisting them from Play Services. Apple owns the entire ecosystem and prevents third-party from having access to the same feature set.

Something tells me that the thing about Google not allowing custom Andriod operating systems to install apps is not quite true. I don't know about this specific topic yet, but I bet that if I look into it, I'll find out that there's nuance here that isn't been correctly portrayed by your comment.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#204

Post by nradov »

sfblah wrote: post #200

Something like 5% of the time when I pair my airpods to my apple wathc to go for a run, only one of them pairs. So, if I've actually started running, I then have to circle back to get the headphones case, unpair them, stick them back in the case and hope it then works after i close the lid for a minute. Anyone have a solution for this?

Well you need to bring your iPhone to take selfies for Strava anyway because otherwise the run doesn't count.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#205

Post by hapticmonkey »

I don't know much about this, but does "proximity pairing" use some open standard API that's part of the bluetooth spec? Are there any examples of other devices using something like this?

Part of the appeal of Airpods is how seamless they are to pair and share between devices. The UX of bluetooth headphones pairing and device switching before Airpods came along seemed atrocious.

Is this a case of Apple arbitrarily locking out third parties, or is a case of Apple doing the work to get something to work nicely and now being forced to give competition access?

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#206

Post by enaaem »

jwr wrote: post #36

I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good…

There is this idea that regulations are unnatural and no regulations are natural. But the environment where in Apple can operate and make profit is completely artificial. We could go really deep into the origins of nation states, but there is also a practical example like IP law. Is it natural that no one is allowed to copy a iPhone one-to-one? Imagine our ancestors weren’t allowed to copy bow and arrows.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#207

Post by mbirth »

dijit wrote: post #137
rikafurude21 wrote: post #45

Recently bought an apple watch for my mom and got it set up with her iphone. Almost instantly she notices that she cant accept WhatsApp calls on her watch, and after looking into it I found out that it was another one of those apple things where they assume youre obviously using facetime so that functionality isnt available for any other app. For context, in europe Whatsapp is the dominating messaging app and alot of…

You can accept calls on the watch from Telegram. So this sounds like a “whatsapp didn’t want to do it” more than a “Apple disallowed it”

Most probably. WhatsApp is also still using the old way of accessing photos where you have to define which photos WA has access to every time you want to share newly taken photos. I’m pretty sure they do that deliberately so you get annoyed and give them blanket access to all your photos. (Which they then probably secretly analyse in the background.)

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#208

Post by chongli »

array_key_first wrote: post #147
llmslave2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that I'm the one arguing in bad faith is laughable. Nobody has actually addressed any of the points I brought up, instead defaulting to assertions that regulations are necessary and thus I'm "objectively wrong". This is not how you foster good discussions - you need to be willing to listen and address the opposing viewpoints that are brought up. If I wanted to do the same thing you are doing, I would simpl…

Right, but regulations are necessary. And ideological opposition to regulation, as a concept, in inherently wrong and always will be. Some regulations are good, some are bad. In order to have a free market, you MUST have some regulations. It's not optional. The reason is simple and intuitive - if you don't regulate the free market, it will just make itself un-free, which is what we're seeing with Apple. You need to a…

which is what we're seeing with Apple

Apple is the result of a broad class of regulations: IP laws. Would Apple even exist without IP laws? I doubt it.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#209

Post by Hnrobert42 »

sfblah wrote: post #200

Something like 5% of the time when I pair my airpods to my apple wathc to go for a run, only one of them pairs. So, if I've actually started running, I then have to circle back to get the headphones case, unpair them, stick them back in the case and hope it then works after i close the lid for a minute. Anyone have a solution for this?

I had that problem with PowerBeats Pro. Sadly, my solution was to get new headphones.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#210

Post by charcircuit »

aprilnya wrote: post #60
heavyset_go wrote: post #32

Currently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves. For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack a…

On the other hand, there’s been a bug open to make a simple harmless change to fix this in Android for 9 months, with no response from Google other than asking for reproduction steps as far as I can tell. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238 Some comments on the bug accuse Google of intentionally not fixing it to make people buy Pixel Buds instead of AirPods. I wouldn’t say that myself, but then again I a…

Buganizer is not where you submit code to be reviewed and accepted into Android. And by the author's own admission that change is a hack and not a proper fix. Anyone is free to make a proper fix and upstream it if they wanted to.
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