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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

#551

Post by askvictor »

stkdump wrote: post #231
askvictor wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Apple had a sinister plan here... First, they make all of their own Apple gear's bluetooth work really well with other Apple gear (which they generally do). Then get rid of the cables, and everyone else will copy Apple because that seems to be what other companies do. But everyone else's bluetooth implementations suck (which they generally do), so people think that Android/Samsung/etc aren't as good as Apple wh…

I dunno, people here report having problems with iPhones pairing to their cars. I never had a problem with Android phones pairing with my car. Or with my soundcores. As matter of fact, it works so much better, that even though my phone still has a 3.5mm, never thought I would have to use it and would be quite ok if my next phone came without. Back before I had my first soundcores I would always be annoyed with the co…

My point is that Apple products work (almost) perfectly with other Apple products. Apple don't make cars (yet); the market there that they probably care about is probably handled by CarPlay.

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

#552

Post by listless »

jeffnappi wrote: post #317
listless wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try getting thousands of organizations to agree on something and then implement it successfully... The complexity of the problem far surpasses that of the technical standards themselves.

“The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from”

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

#553

Post by iancmceachern »

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…

Samir is brilliant. Talk about identifying a need and then solving it in the most efficient way possible.

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

#554

Post by makeitdouble »

westmeal wrote: post #545
makeitdouble wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BT device makers are also coming in a slightly less explored field and have to make UX decisions that might not have clear answers yet. For instance some BT headset have only a few buttons, and the play/pause button does also redial the last connected phone number depending on the phone’s state. I’m sure someone thought this feature made a ton of sense and really helps them in their day to day life, while I hate with…

Config files/settings.

This is of course part of the puzzle, and that behavior having no config is probably a sign it's still not mature enough.

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

#555

Post by SilasX »

xeromal wrote: post #547
SilasX wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what was the humorous writing there? Seemed like a pretty direct statement of the facts of their case. The fact that underlying events are funny doesn't say anything about the style of writing, and I don't see any stylistic choices that were going for "deliberately humorous writing", let alone ones that show a gift (though of course the poster might show it in other contexts!).

Woah. This comment is hilarious, but it's not the writing. But to explain the humorous aspects of the poster's story, it's the naked men that he sprinkles throughout the story. Mentioning it multiple times is what makes it funny among funny bits.

> Woah. This comment is hilarious, but it's not the writing.

Hence my confusion at the compliment. And now, at people who find it, in any way objectionable, to express such confusion.

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

#556

Post by Aeolun »

emrvb wrote: post #164
Aeolun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the improved sound quality comes at a cost?

Bose and improved sound quality in one sentence?

We’re also comparing it to cheap MPow. That’s already a bargain brand, I can’t imagine what cheap means in that context.

The bluetooth controller may well be the most expensive part of the headset.

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

#557

Post by MobiusHorizons »

smoldesu wrote: post #466
MobiusHorizons wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I am honestly bewildered when I see the tech press comparing true wireless earbuds to AirPods and not mentioning the enormous ergonomic differences.

Bluetooth experiences will be largely software-dependent. Comparing Airpods on a Macbook to a Windows laptop and some Sony earbuds? It's no contest, Airpods will win every time. If we're, say, testing the Airpods on Windows and the Sony buds on Linux (where they have LDAC support), the tables will be completely turned. All of these headphones are context-sensitive, and will behave differently on different hardware. Y…

> All of the "magic" your AirPods provide are software-based

This is actually not true. AirPods contain custom silicon from Apple for the controller that speaks bluetooth, whereas most true wireless headphones use a Qualcomm chip, and therefore suffer the exact same ergonomic issues almost regardless of price. The most obvious way this is shown is that you can be on a call with the right airpod in, then seamlessly add the left to the call and put the right back in the case all without dropping the call, developing sync issues, or making the switch obvious to the other party. It's especially useful if your airpods are low on power. Airpods also better than average (in my experience) at switching devices when clicking the connect button from a device they are not currently connected to. This is most obviously good with apple devices (where there is auto pairing based on apple id), but in my experience it works better than the average even on non-apple devices. I am comparing the experience to Sony WF-100XM3 as well as cheaper devices like soundcore liberty neo.

Of course you are correct that there are additional software derived things that make airpods nice on apple products. When they work well, they can be pretty great, but I still find those hit or miss. For me, the way the controller can switch easily between the right and left as well as easy pairing are what makes airpods great.

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

#558

Post by porknubbins »

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…

Sending the play command itself would be less of a problem if iOS wasn’t so completely opaque as to what “currently playing” or “default music app” means, but that distinction itself would require more clarity as to whether apps can be run in the background or not.

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

#559

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #36

The annoying thing I have with bluetooth, is with my headphones, I connect them up, set them as the sound source and just..... nothing. I have to go round all of my devices and disable the bluetooth on them, because some other device is connected too and although that is not playing any sound at all, somehow has priority and doesn't allow any sound to be played by any other device.

That's one of the core annoyances of Bluetooth: it's 1:1, not many:many.

I've got a desktop, a laptop, and a phone. I've got a Bluetooth earbuds (with microphone) and a Bluetooth speaker (no mic).

So obviously it should be simple to play audio from any of those devices to both the earbuds and the speaker at the same time. With wired headphones & speakers, that took a $2 splitter. But with Bluetooth, at best you can get one application per output.

It'd be really nice if you could play audio from multiple sources to the different speakers at the same time. But that can't be done. You have to disconnect from one device, connect to the other, each time. I've never even seen a Bluetooth mixer (not a wired mixer that can use Bluetooth, but a device that can manage multiple Bluetooth connections for different audio streams at once).

The same stuff all applies to Bluetooth microphones.

Bluetooth needs many:many audio streams to get parity with wired sound.

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

#560

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

yalogin wrote: post #538

The user experience is also terrible. In all the Bluetooth enabled cars I saw, the audio starts playing the moment the phone connects to the car. There isn’t anyway to disable it. This is a problem for atleast 5-7yrs now. Even Tesla and apple couldn’t fix it

That's app dependent, at least on Android. I've got the PowerAmp music player as my default, it has an option to disable "Resume on Bluetooth".
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