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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

#501

Post by foobarbecue »

IMO the problem with bluetooth is applicable to many modern technologies:

- it can do a lot of things and in many scenarios there are decisions to make (which device to connect to? multiple? should I start playing something? what? should I stop the other thing? play over it?)

- instead of focusing on making it configurable, the designers focused on trying to guess what the average user wants (no users are average)

And then there's the seperate fact that it doesn't have any decent 2-way audio protocols STILL which makes me sad.

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

#502

Post by pbreit »

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…

I have never, not once ever, wanted something to autoplay when a bluetooth device connected.

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

#503

Post by ggus »

dudus wrote: post #480
onlyusername wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delete the Apple Music app from your phone.

I don't have an iPhone. But at least on OSX I didn't find a clean way to remove Apple Music. Every time I accidentally tap play on my bluetooth headset it opens Apple Music and asks me accept the ToS, which I happily reject. It's a daily thing for me because it's almost impossible to put my headphones on without triggering a play due to bad button placement.

You can try remapping the button. Not sure if it would work, but try: https://superuser.com/questions/554489/how-can-i-remap-a-pla...

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

#504

Post by nostromo »

darthrupert wrote: post #359
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…

An Apple problem. Their car connectivity follows the idea that configuration is evil and there's only one way to do a thing.

This isn't correct. Apple Car Play does not play anything automatically on start. It's the Lexus that is telling the device to begin playing music.

If you don't use Apple Music, it'll pick the only album you have -- which for many people is the U2 album Apple added to everyone's library for free many years ago.

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

#505

Post by jonathantf2 »

Koshkin wrote: post #253
oblio wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It needed an HP account to be able to scan. You can use Windows apps to do the scanning without creating an HP account.

Some new HP printers lock scanning on the printer side unless you sign in with an account, any printer with an e at the end of the model number won't even let you print to 9100 without an account.

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

#506

Post by NavinF »

lloeki wrote: post #397
cptcobalt wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with my husband's car, his phone, and the song "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend. I now jokingly play it as the first song any time we head off on a long road trip, much to his immense frustration.

Sort happens by album artist over here, the first one being Take On Me by a-ha, triggering all sorts of physical pavlovian reactions now. Trigger seems to be iOS thinking it's being helpful so that when I "plug" headphones (either physically, bluetoothically, or carplayly) I presumably want to play music. Also, double click on Library in Music.app nee iTunes on macOS. Plays the whole library, linearly, which, like, w…

> iOS thinking it's being helpful so that when I "plug" headphones (either physically, bluetoothically, or carplayly) I presumably want to play music

There’s gotta be something else going on because I’ve never had this happen over the last decade. I’m pretty sure the car is sending a play command to the phone every time it connects.

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

#507

Post by vladvasiliu »

Groxx wrote: post #491
vladvasiliu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird. I've had pretty much the reverse experience. My Sony and Shure headphones have always worked perfectly (even on Linux!), but I've had issues with a keyboard and mouse not reconnecting after they went to sleep (computer stayed fully on), or at least taking forever. However, I was surprised by how little lag the mouse had compared to its regular wireless (Logitech unifying).

I wonder if it's due to trying to use the newer Bluetooth profiles? Which of course OSX and Windows don't let you select, nor do the vast majority of headsets. Every headset I've used with SBC selected has worked perfectly, including some ancient cheap ones, and I'm pretty sure that's how things are connecting to my car (which always works). --- For mice, I dunno. I've had consistently good results, and I primarily u…

I very rarely use Windows, but on Linux my headphones use either LDAC (Sony) or aptX HD (or something like that) for the Shure. On my mac and iPhone they use AAC. Never had any issue with any combination.

Regarding the keyboard, I do feel a slight lag compared to wired, but not enough to bother me. The mouse also seems to have a tiny bit more lag compared to its own dongle; however sometimes it seems very laggy for a moment. This never happens with the dongle. I mostly use these in the countryside, in a detached house with not many wireless or microwave devices around, so I don't think it's interference related. The headphones don't skip a beat, either in the same environment or in my apartment building or office in the city, with plenty of wifis, microwaves, wireless mice, phones, etc around.

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

#508

Post by avidiax »

fleddr wrote: post #313

Bluetooth is absolute garbage, I hate it with a passion even if overall it works in 90% of cases. Just the other day I was connecting my phone to a mobile speaker in the garden. The phone is an inch away from it. Still doesn't connect, just a spinner that times out after a minute with "connection failed". Why does it fail? Who knows. It might work tomorrow. Or on another phone. Or when the weather is different. What…

You could actually have the devices too close (overdriving the RF receiver). Or the two antennas are oriented with their null directions facing each other.

My go-to method to get difficult BT gear to pair is to place both devices in the microwave and shut the door. The microwave is a faraday cage for 2.4Ghz, so it removes interference as a potential problem. If it still fails, you can turn on the microwave and enjoy a light show at least.

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

#509

Post by crubier »

mandmandam wrote: post #474
crubier wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally what the parent comment is describing

It bears repeating. I've tried to remove that f*cking album from my library so many times, on so many devices. It's effectively unkillable; and I'm no stranger to computers. Why that tax-dodging blowhard felt he had the right to squeeze his turd of an album onto each and every apple product I buy for, presumably, the rest of my life is unfathomable.

I totally agree with that, I didn't like U2 back then but I know actively hate them since that episode.

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

#510

Post by rkagerer »

oliveshell wrote: post #415
feet wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why the hell is it autoplaying in the first place? Does apple really hate their customers/users so much that they can't make this an option? That's completely insane. The more I learn about apple, the more I see extremely hostile UI decisions for literally no reason

I believe what’s happening is that certain car stereos are programmed to basically send the “play” command as soon as a device is connected. From the phone’s perspective, it’s as if you had connected Bluetooth headphones and then pressed the “play/pause” button. I say this because my iPhone never autoplays when connecting to any Bluetooth audio device except for my car stereo. I agree it’s aggressive and should be ab…

Couldn't the phone provide an option to disable this on a per-device basis?
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