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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

#371

Post by NikolaNovak »

bigie35 wrote: post #252
NikolaNovak wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion. Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years! Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge. Man can these things backfire! But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice;…

Highly likely I'm misremembering, but a decade (at least) or so, there was an iTunes promo where Itunes literally pushed a free U2 album to everyone who had an iTunes account for free. I specifically remember the internet hate that received at the time haha. Here's a link: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/09/the-free-u2-album...

Yup. And the hate and negative backlash is still here - I'm not kidding, my wife can NOT hear U2 without a visceral reaction! It followed her through like 3 cars, until she finally married a guy nerdy and persistent enough :-D

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

#372

Post by 0x00000000 »

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…

If you use Apple Music, it has the additional benefit of wasting all of your data and battery every time you turn your car on since it streams your entire library on shuffle.

I thought I was clever and could fix this problem by using the iPhone’s “Shortcuts” app “Automation” feature to pause after connecting to the car’s Bluetooth. But for some reason the thing called “automation” requires manual fucking interaction every time. Yes, that’s right you have to click on a prompt to run the “automation” shortcut.

Turns out it’s a limitation of the “on connect to Bluetooth” trigger for “security” yet this isn’t explained anywhere. Because if someone stole my phone and car they might be able to... pause the music? Thanks Apple.

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

#373

Post by sp332 »

amelius wrote: post #111
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?

Bluetooth barely has the bandwidth for stereo audio to begin with. Doubling it up means ok-ish mono audio for each of you, or really crummy stereo.

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

#374

Post by MobiusHorizons »

wil421 wrote: post #351
ricardobayes wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without FAANG. I'm lead to believe the world would be a better place if all companies would have a max company size of Bose, or Sennheiser. Then no stupid decisions could be pushed through by force, like the removal of the 3.5 mm jack. If the market really wants it, they will eventually vote with their wallet. Same goes with social media, fb killed off local country-spe…

3.5mm can go to hell for a phone. I’d prefer the waterproofing we have with iPhones nowadays. If you need an adapter they are available.

Phones exist that have both waterproofing and a headphone jack. I’m sure it’s a challenge, but it’s not technically an either or decision.

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

#375

Post by matrixcubed »

Arch Enemy’s “Aces High” cover-song autoplayed one too many times at too-high a volume first thing in the morning while preparing to drive to work. I eventually cleared out my Apple Music songs and much more calmly welcome whatever pop station my wife leaves the radio on instead when I start my car.

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

#376

Post by NikolaNovak »

wil421 wrote: post #351
ricardobayes wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without FAANG. I'm lead to believe the world would be a better place if all companies would have a max company size of Bose, or Sennheiser. Then no stupid decisions could be pushed through by force, like the removal of the 3.5 mm jack. If the market really wants it, they will eventually vote with their wallet. Same goes with social media, fb killed off local country-spe…

3.5mm can go to hell for a phone. I’d prefer the waterproofing we have with iPhones nowadays. If you need an adapter they are available.

Interesting; is there some connection between waterproofing and 3.5mm I'm missing?

There's plenty of phones and devices waterproofed to any given standard with 3.5mm. To my ignorant mind, a USB C or Lightning port is not fundamentally different exposure / difficulty than 3.5mm when it comes to this - this is far from my area of expertise, but a cursory google search, and plentiful of counter-examples, indicates this is just a post-hoc justification for Apple's removal, not a real critical path.

Understanding that "if you need something, get an adapter / live the dongle life" is the core Apple philosophy, and agreeing that most standards should eventually die (parallel port, Firewire, etc), 3.5mm still seems a uniquely standardized, useful, and time proof feature that's is sorely missed with no adequate replacement (dongle, of course, is not it, for many reasons - expense, inconvenience, losing them, and if you want to charge your phone while being on a call things get very wonky very quickly - does Apple even offer a 1st-party solution for this common office-worker use-case?)

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

#377

Post by anonair »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #369
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…

The first song in my library was a song by Killswitch Engage. A very loud song with lots of screaming. Ultimately I deleted the Music app from my iPhone to solve the auto play problem. I used Spotify for music at the time (now VLC). Deleting the app to solve the problem definitely feels like an extreme solution to a problem which shouldn’t be a problem at all! But I have worse Bluetooth problems. My favorite Bluetoot…

Unfortunately, deleting Music app turns off iPod integration, and now I’m unable to use other media players on my car over USB

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

#378

Post by croddin »

kretaceous wrote: post #214

Someone should make a Bluetooth alternative just for audio transmission with a sane, forward-compatible spec.[1] More than half of Bluetooth woes will disappear. When I was annoyed to no end by my headphones, I searched upon Bluetooth alternatives and why are they not in widespread use. I did not find much. Bluetooth needs a rebirth. 1: No. Don't reply with xkcd 926.

Ok I’ll reply with https://xkcd.com/2055/ then ;-) I wish something like what is described in this comic could be implemented as pairing method in a future version of Bluetooth. It sounds like it could help some of the problems.

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

#379

Post by bagels »

ricardobayes wrote: post #354
aliqot wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market wants what the other segment of the market has, that's the purpose of marketing. Phones with no jacks, like laptops with no i/o, is something impractical that people self-justify because of the logo and the clout it affords. You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone . Airpods are just about the worst headphones money can buy and people fight over them, despite…

I see the same happening with a certain new EV that I won't name. It has a nice design, but often gets people stranded, outright bricked through OTA. To the point where dealers advise users not to perform OTA updates. Literal pieces falling off the car while driving. The need to call the tow truck after 2k miles is very common. In normal car terms, it's junk. But people fight tooth and nail to defend it. Exactly beca…

Sounds dire. What car is this, and where can I read about these cars that very commonly fail after 2k miles?

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

#380

Post by MobiusHorizons »

nucleardog wrote: post #338
aliqot wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market wants what the other segment of the market has, that's the purpose of marketing. Phones with no jacks, like laptops with no i/o, is something impractical that people self-justify because of the logo and the clout it affords. You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone . Airpods are just about the worst headphones money can buy and people fight over them, despite…

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.
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