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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

#291

Post by epsteinisntdead »

dingleberry420 wrote: post #235
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Out of that whole post, you landed on homophobia as a reasonable thing to call out?

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

#292

Post by nothis »

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…

Trying to understand bluetooth's awfulness is a dead-end. I tried. I thought, "yea, you're nerdy enough to read the tech specs, it will be boring but after an hour you'll understand and your bluetooth keyboard will pair every time instead of 85% of times". Nope.

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

#293

Post by jeffnappi »

Bluetooth is quite amazing in general. What it is capable of with extremely low energy usage is just mind blowing really.

I think the main reason it gets a bad rap (e.g. vs WiFi) is that the radio link is conflated with all of the messiness of codec/protocol compatibility and features provided over said radio link.

If there were standards for devices to stream audio over WiFi links, I imaging we'd see nearly similar frustrations in codec, latency and compatibility issues - it's incredibly complex.

Much respect to the engineers out there who make it a good experience. I personally tried my hand at tackling wide-band speech support with PulseAudio etc [1] and I was humbled by the complexity present in the protocol/codec layers.

Hats off to the teams at both PulseAudio and PipeWire who have brought wide band speech support to Linux Desktops :)

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/18...

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

#294

Post by InitialLastName »

vbezhenar wrote: post #265
GoToRO wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also had similar problems with iPhone and BT. Before it worked very good with an Android. What I've learned over time is that apple seems ti sabotage anything that is not apple. I had connection problems with my car, with my Sony BT headphones, with portable speaker. Alk that went away as I switched back to android.

I guess you're right. My bluetooth experience is Macbook, iPhone, Apple keyboard, Apple mouse and Apple headphones. Everything works extremely well. The thing that I like most is power indicator integrated with iOS and macOS. Allows me to charge those things before they run out of power. As long as you stay in the garden, things are smooth.

That's just... the BLE battery level service? AFAICT Windows does the same thing when you connect a BLE device that reports a battery.

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

#295

Post by yndoendo »

Dear platform creators for Bluetooth, Please implement a privacy and battery saving measure. Where once I turn off the paired device, such as a car or headphones, the platform automatically turns off the Bluetooth radio. This prevents tracking with-in stores or offices. Saves battery power. And prevents the device from auto-connecting to my car during ignition. Just because I was using Bluetooth before I arrived does not mean I want to use bluetooth once I depart.

I currently manually do this everytime.

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

#296

Post by listless »

jeffnappi wrote: post #293

Bluetooth is quite amazing in general. What it is capable of with extremely low energy usage is just mind blowing really. I think the main reason it gets a bad rap (e.g. vs WiFi) is that the radio link is conflated with all of the messiness of codec/protocol compatibility and features provided over said radio link. If there were standards for devices to stream audio over WiFi links, I imaging we'd see nearly similar…

I think the main problem is exactly as the article states - there no standard for how things connect to each other. If they could just make the connection standard everywhere, that would get rid of a ton of the silliness.

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

#297

Post by fullstop »

rootusrootus wrote: post #268
GoToRO wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also had similar problems with iPhone and BT. Before it worked very good with an Android. What I've learned over time is that apple seems ti sabotage anything that is not apple. I had connection problems with my car, with my Sony BT headphones, with portable speaker. Alk that went away as I switched back to android.

It is kinda funny, it was this behavior among others that made me switch from android to an iphone. I got so tired of BT shenanigans. I do feel sympathy for the people still having trouble, but mine has been flawless. I do not, however, drive a Lexus.

My cars are all older, but my Android pairs up with a Kia Sportage almost immediately after starting the car. My wife's iPhone 11 sometimes takes several minutes. She ended up getting an adapter to connect audio to the 3.5mm jack.

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

bpicolo wrote: post #290
dmix wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in this thread who is complaining has either a Lexus or a Toyota (who owns Lexus) so it’s obviously a problem with some version of their infotainment system. The U2 thing was obviously an Apple issue. Not sure why they don’t use CarPlay but maybe some people prefer Bluetooth.

I was in a Volkswagen rental last week and the Carplay integration was a disaster. 50% of the time, attempting to play a song on spotify would crash Carplay. It would refuse to work again (or hey, crash again) until you'd left the car off for a lengthy amount of time. Presumably the car turns off the infotainment system at some point, so this is a reboot, but there was no way to reboot manually... So it would remain…

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by kshahkshah »

Beyond some of the autoplay issues - which are software based and not the protocols problem - I haven't had any truly major issues with Bluetooth since 4.1

Honestly since 4.1 it has been overwhelmingly a positive experience. Yes I need to manually click the bluetooth icon in my toolbar on my mac every once in a while to re-establish a connection but that is the extent to which I have troubles.

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

#300

Post by mcculley »

jefe_ wrote: post #185
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…

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…

I had a Mercedes lease for three years with the same problem of automatically playing the first song as sorted alphabetically. In my case, it was "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash. That song loses its humor after you hear it a few hundred times.
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