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A comment on AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem. Parent comment

Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by CharlesW on Sunday November 16, 2025 @12:41PM (#45946874)
You're proving the parent commenter's point that "this is about availability of special features which require a dedicated driver non-Apple devices are not expected to have", because there is no standard way in BLE to report more than one battery value. Wireless earbuds are a device pair, each with its own battery.

Apple, like every other vendor, does not have a choice but to implement this as a proprietary characteristic. Pre-BLE, other vendors copied Apple's de-facto `HFP AT+IPHONEACCEV` standard for reporting battery levels to the OS.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by thayne on Sunday November 16, 2025 @01:21PM (#45947181)
> Apple, like every other vendor, does not have a choice but to implement this as a proprietary characteristic. Pre-BLE, other vendors copied Apple's de-facto `HFP

They could publish the details, and not block other manufacturer details, so that it is easier for other platforms to develop drivers for them. Or develop a new standard that works for their earbuds.

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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by kiitos on Sunday November 16, 2025 @03:54PM (#45948308)
why would apple do this? it's all cost and no benefit.

companies actually can build and ship stuff that isn't inter-operable with the world, this is Actually Good for user experience

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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by oblio on Sunday November 16, 2025 @04:20PM (#45948500)
> why would apple do this? it's all cost and no benefit.

Imagine if every human on the planet would operate like this.

We'd be back in the Stone Ages.

> companies actually can build and ship stuff that isn't inter-operable with the world, this is Actually Good for user experience

...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by kiitos on Monday November 17, 2025 @08:35AM (#45953431)
what? stone ages?

god forbid someone prioritize concrete user experience over abstract interoperability

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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by TylerE on Sunday November 16, 2025 @01:40PM (#45947315)
Or… just report whichever one is lower, which is the value 99% of people care about 99% of The time.
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by manmal on Sunday November 16, 2025 @06:01PM (#45949248)
I often use just one of them, and then I want to know that one‘s battery.
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by freedomben on Sunday November 16, 2025 @06:08PM (#45949296)
If you're only using one, it seems fine to have only one battery level report. I don't see the problem
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by smileybarry on Sunday November 16, 2025 @10:57PM (#45950734)
No, in that case they'd want both to be reported separately so they could use the AirPod with the higher charge.
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by exe34 on Monday November 17, 2025 @05:28AM (#45952369)
whichever one you're using will be reporting its battery level. if you want to know the other one, swap them around.
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by tass on Monday November 17, 2025 @06:28AM (#45952689)
I use mine in meetings and often end up in a situation where I need to remove and charge the one which is about to go flat for a few minutes.

I need to know individual levels to do that

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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by dpoloncsak on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @01:04PM (#45982686)
Which is solved by the suggestion of 'only reporting the lower of the two', right? The one with more battery isn't about to go flat...
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Re:AirPods Libreated from Apple's Ecosystem by tass on Sunday November 30, 2025 @11:14PM (#46103409)
Only if it tells you which one it is
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