Re:Apple Delays Rollout of Child Safety Features
by istingray on Friday September 03, 2021 @12:37PM
(#28406414)
Good context. Given that Bluetooth is the issue, what should we do instead? Some new standard? I've seen some headphones that offer a non-Bluetooth USB wireless dongle (Corsair)
Re:Apple Delays Rollout of Child Safety Features
by mschuster91 on Friday September 03, 2021 @01:06PM
(#28406753)
> Some new standard?
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
I'm not sure. From an implementation POV, re-starting wUSB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB) again would be an easy way out - for a lot of things that can be done over Bluetooth there are USB device classes and drivers already, so all that would be required on the OS side is support for a discovery/secure pairing mechanism.
FTFY: "Everyone except macOS doesn't support bluetooth well".
The Windows situation is a horrid mess - it was with w7 and at least three different commercial stacks, and my s/o can't use her brand new Sony headphones on her three year old w10 Lenovo laptop as it ends up in stuttering audio. Linux isn't better. Audio stacks are a mess (even independent of Bluetooth), BTLE is an even worse mess, and I have no idea why Android is relentlessly buggy. And the Nintendo Switch doesn't support anything except compatible controllers, you need an external, third party adapter that blocks the docking port for decent wireless capability.
The only ones who have managed something decent with Bluetooth are Apple, where everything you ordinarily need (headphones, mice, keyboards) just works (tm).
The core problem is that Bluetooth itself is an old, ugly, grown standard with lots of different stuff bolted on, not much in terms of interoperability testing and closed binary blobs everywhere.