> Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook
> Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features!
I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in.
EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine
AirPods can connect to any device and perform on par with other Bluetooth headphones. This is about availability of special features which require a dedicated driver non-Apple devices are not expected to have.
They don't report battery status to non-Apple devices. This is a pretty basic feature and without this I wouldn't consider them to perform "on par" with other Bluetooth headphones.
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.
> 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.
I wonder how well that conversation detection works. Does it really help in a loud environment?
As a neurodivergent person I lack the innate human skill to filter voices out of a cacaphony of noise so loud bars etc are hell. There also the "talking with earphones in is rude" but that's an issue that can just be explained.
Needing root to enable it is a major deal-breaker though :( and moving to an iPhone is impossible for me. Too much stuff that's not supported.
Or Apple just doesn't want to bother with the nightmare of supplying and supporting an app to do all those things on other platforms, and in particular, there are regulatory approvals around the "hearing aid" feature that would pretty much require a specific device.
They have a basic app for some of their other devices like the Beats line. One other thing you simply can't do without pairing AirPods with an Apple device is enrol them in AppleCare One.
You're commenting on a post where a random guy provides this "nightmare of supplying and supporting an app" in his spare time, except he actually has to work around Apple's malicious obfuscation and standards non-compliance, so it would actually be way easier for Apple to do it themselves.
From what it says, a rooted device is required because Apple made them behave differently depending on the host. Apple wouldn't have needed a rooted Android device to support all the features.
Are you saying this would the first time an unpaid open source effort has done something a big company declined to do because of the operational costs they face?
It is in fact significantly harder for Apple. Because nobody expects random spare time GitHub project to work perfectly. Or even very well. Apple’s reputation, and trillion dollar market value, is based on the idea that their stuff works perfectly.
good god man, just accept that this is objectively an EXTREMELY easy thing to do for anyone. Yes theoretically there are things that are easier for OSS devs than large companies, THIS AIN'T ONE OF THEM.
Ugh, trillion dollar market value doesn't mean they are incapable of making a basic android app. Check their move to ios app if you have any doubts.
It doesn’t matter how frustrated you get or how many times you write capital letters, Apple is a private company and can do exactly what they want to do. If you would like Apple to do your bidding, acquire a controlling interest - it’s public so there’s nothing stopping you.
Welcome to this argument which is about how easy/hard it might be for a company to implement this particular feature.
The argument about whether they ought to is in some other thread I imagine, you might have lost your way. I don't own their airpods so in this particular instance, IDC about the outcome.
Are you aware they are maintaining multiple complete OSs, and multiple versions of each? With drivers for hundreds of components? The scope of AirPods on Android is laughable in comparison.
You're responding in a sub-thread where others have specifically called out the fact that you can't get battery status from AirPods on non-Apple platforms. This is, to my knowledge, a feature that is supported natively by the Bluetooth stacks on every mainstream OS and requires no "apps" at all. For example, I can connect my Bluetooth mouse to my Linux machine and it happily reports the state of the battery.
Care to offer a justification for why this is the case without resorting to "the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth can't be bothered to build an app"?
The multi battery levels thing is native proprietary on every platform since there is no Bluetooth spec for more than one battery level and even that just uses uint8.
As I posted elsewhere in the thread, this is incorrect. The Bluetooth Battery Service spec allows for a single device with multiple batteries and individual battery reporting for each. [0] They even give the example in that doc of earbuds which are one “logical device” but two physically separate pieces, each with its own battery.
As additional evidence, there are "AirPods-like" earbuds on the market such as the Sony WF-C700N, which have no problem reporting three battery levels over standard Bluetooth on e.g. Linux.
The Bluetooth Battery Service spec allows for a single device with multiple batteries
As of version 1.1 of the battery service which was finalized at the end of 2022. Given Bluetooth's track record, who knows what kind of interoperability landmines exist.
If you don't like the Apple device, use something else. It's not like a messaging platform where you'd need compatibility with other peoples' phones.
If you'd bothered to dig into the spec, v1.0 basically says do what you want. v1.1 defines a proper namespace and well known descriptions for multiple batteries. Apple did well to avoid the interoperability minefield.
> If you don't like the Apple device, use something else. It's not like a messaging platform where you'd need compatibility with other peoples' phones.
I own and use lots of devices, for both work and personal tasks, including Apple and non-Apple devices. I own a pair of AirPods. I'd like them to work well across all the platforms that I use. There is nothing technically preventing Apple from achieving this, aside from Apple's arguably illegal tying behavior.
> If you'd bothered to dig into the spec, v1.0 basically says do what you want. v1.1 defines a proper namespace and well known descriptions for multiple batteries. Apple did well to avoid the interoperability minefield.
I have read the spec; please don't accuse me of not reading it. Have you written Bluetooth device firmware before? In case you haven't, at a high level:
* The BT device exposes a "profile," which defines one or more "services", which are essentially different types of data that can be read from or written to the device.
* Multiple instances of the same type of service (the Battery Service in this case) can be exposed in the profile. I don't know if this ability was always present in the spec or was added after the fact, but it was, at minimum, present in 2011 when the BAS 1.0 spec was released.
* So, if your device has more than one battery, its profile will have an instance of the Battery Service defined for each one.
I will grant that the 1.1 spec document is a lot clearer and provides lots of diagrammed examples, but the only net new functionality in 1.1 are a set of new battery-related fields (these are called out near the beginning).
When a device has more than one instance of the Battery service, each Battery
Level characteristic shall include a Characteristic Presentation Format
descriptor that has a namespace/description value that is unique for that
instance of the Battery service.
1.1 says:
When a device has more than one instance of the Battery Service, each Battery
Level characteristic shall include a Characteristic Presentation Format descriptor
(Volume 3, Part G, Section 3.3.3.5 in [1]) that has the Name Space field set to
”Bluetooth SIG” and the Description field set to a valid value from the GATT
Namespace Descriptors [4] and that is unique among all instances of the Battery
Service exposed by the GATT Server.
1.0 was a mess and your anger over a poorly defined and relatively minor feature seems quite misplaced. Bluetooth interoperability has historically been a mess (still is from my experience). But go ahead be big mad that Airpods only play audio from third party devices and don't provide battery status in a way that adheres to a recent revision of the standard. Meanwhile I'm sure Sony would never use a proprietary format ever…
I had posted a reply addressing your points, but I don't think this discussion is productive and you don't seem to want to engage honestly with what I'm saying and stay on topic. So I'll just say have a good day.
So they refuse to report anything useful rather than make use of the single battery level. Amazingly every other brand of Bluetooth earbuds manage to report a useful battery level despite them having a separate battery in each side.
The Bluetooth spec only supports one battery status. AirPods have three batteries. Is 1 < 3 a satisfactory enough answer to you?
On the subject of the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth, Apple is a private company. If you have the capital, you can acquire a controlling interest and then they’ll work on whatever you like. Until then, you’re out of luck.
> The Bluetooth spec only supports one battery status. AirPods have three batteries. Is 1 < 3 a satisfactory enough answer to you?
No, it's not. The Bluetooth Battery Service spec allows for a single device with multiple batteries and individual battery reporting for each. [0] They even give the example in that doc of earbuds which are one “logical device” but two physically separate pieces, each with its own battery.
> On the subject of the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth, Apple is a private company.
Apple is, by definition, a public company.
> If you have the capital, you can acquire a controlling interest and then they’ll work on whatever you like. Until then, you’re out of luck.
No. Anticompetitive behavior such as tying (what I would argue is happening here) can and should always be subject to examination, criticism, and possible litigation by the public.
Always this sad argument that X is a private company and they can do what they like.
Companies are not acts of God or nature. They are a private company operating on a society that allows it to exist because it is believed to be the for the public good. The public has very much the right to question it's practices, and if they are anti consumer, monopolistic, or a list of other things, to correct them. Shareholders be damned.
So what's your argument then? Companies can't release a product unless each and every feature works with their competitors products? By that logic most of the software and hardware you use today simply would not exist.
Like a lot of parts of the (especially earlier revisions of) Bluetooth spec the battery status took a slapdash approach to defining things. Look at anyone who's used Bluetooth on Windows to see what a nightmare interoperability still is. So Apple released ear buds that implement poorly defined parts of the spec but otherwise work with third party bluetooth devices, and that's bad?
Yikes.
Meanwhile, the Bluetooth SIG released an update at the end of 2022 that actually starts to require some sort of standardization. You know who's name was on that little update? Big bad awful anticompetitive Apple.
Yeah, there are two batteries, the one in the earbuds and the one in the container. There's no way in BLE to transmit both values - and choosing either one is lying to the user about something.
It's not uncommon (at least for me) to have a low earbud battery level (because I've just binged Slow Horses) or a low container battery (because I've just charged the earbuds from the container for the third time and drained the container). There's a suggestion above that you should "just choose the lowest one because 99% of the time that's what you're interested in", except that's not true in the second case.
I'm fairly sure that if you could report both, then Apple would report both using this hypothetical standard method, but since you can't, and there's no easy way to just "choose one" without misleading the user about something, they choose to do it properly, even though that means it's an Apple-only thing.
See my other replies in this thread — it’s totally possible to do with standard Bluetooth, yet Apple doesn’t do it. So your “fairly sure” assumption that Apple would make use of this feature if it existed seems to be wrong.
What "other platforms" are you talking about? Just an Android app would suffice. It's not a huge deal for a company worth trillions, especially if the features are already there and they're just blocking non-Apple products. If they deliberately do that, it makes you think they don't really care about their customers and are more interested in locking people into their ecosystem.
Not just non-Apple devices. I have a machine with older MacOS and the current Apple keyboard doesn't report battery status. I can't think of a reason why that would work differently from Apple's own older keyboards, but it does.
Actually even within Apple ecosystem not all devices are made equal. MacBooks lack some features available for AirPods Pro on iPhones, e.g. seal check, translation, everything in the "accessibility" category: button press duration settings, single-airpod noise-cancelling, etc.
Android obviously is out of the game totally for AirPods - no spacial audio, no changes of ANC, no battery level, but at least ANC modes can be changed on AirPods directly, and button press works to answer calls, and pause/play audio, and also volume control works.
I'm three-generation Airpods Pro (around 5 years) user on Android and Macbook (no iPhone at all). In first and second generation there was a "bug" (or intentional feature) that even when connected to Android, and not being connected to my Mac, the latter was showing the charge level on both Airpods, but at some point it was removed.
In first and second generation I had an issue with one AirPod making strange noises, in both cases even Apple Support at the Genius Bar didn't know what to make out of it that I don't use AirPods with iPhone, but only with a Mac (and Android).
This is patently incorrect. Wife switched from iphone 13 mini to samsung s24, and airpods pro 2nd gen immediately started behaving extremely annoyingly to the point of becoming completely useless for any serious use and she just gave them away to her sister which still is on apple, although she loved them before.
Literally all other earpieces work flawlessly with that phone including dirt cheap chinese stuff, apart from apple.
Now somebody could come and claim multi trillion company couldnt just nail that pesky bluetooth protocol well, but everybody else can do it better than them, including 15 bucks products. Its all by design. They clearly dont need hardware revenue to have products who can compete on open market, they need their closed ecosystem revenue, hence these dirty practices. There is hopefully a billion or ten lawsuit in the making by courts with balls, ie EU.
All the downvotes in the world won't change above.
I have no issues with airpod pros 2 on a nice cheap OnePlus phone. They also pair with my Linux PC through a random Bluetooth dongle and that also works fine.
Just take apple to small claims court. If everyone who is scammed by Apple takes them to small claims they will have an incentive to change. Without this they have -0.00000000000 incentive to do anything. Even a class action suit won't help. The fundamental question is whether Apple should be able to sell products with lock in. Since there is lockin on all Apple products it is not accidental. In my humble opinion only. You, dear reader, work out your own thoughts.
> The fundamental question is whether Apple should be able to sell products with lock in.
Unpopular opinion in these parts, but I think yes, they should be able to (continue) to sell products with lock in.
Where Apple should get in trouble is specifically locking others out, rather than locking their own stuff in. If Apple wants to make a smartwatch that only works with iPhones, fine. What they shouldn't be able to do is block (either intentionally or via undocumented/private APIs and TOS violations) third parties from making a smartwatch for iPhone that can compete on the same playing field as the Apple Watch, with access to all of the same features.
Same goes for all tech companies. If you want to lock-in your own first party products, fine, but you absolutely should not be allowed to lock-out others.
I'm not entirely sure if the distinction you're making exists.
Let's say I'm Samsung and I want to make a phone that works with the Apple Watch. Isn't the Apple Watch locking me out? Apple is preventing third party devices from working with the Apple Watch.
I’m saying it’s fine for Apple to make first party tech that only works either their other tech.
Samsung not being able to make a phone to work with Apples first party accessory isn’t the problem.
The problem is Samsung can’t make a watch that functions on par with the Apple Watch on iPhones.
Having first party, integrated accessories is fine. Locking out third party accessories is the issue.
Whatever Apple makes first party for the iPhone , third parties should also be able to make for the iPhone with the same level of access and functionality.
I think the line between accessory and non-accessory is really slippery. When the iPhone was released, I think it would have been correct to call it an accessory for your computer. When did that change, exactly?
Heck, I don't really think of my Apple Watch as an accessory. Mine has its own LTE connection; it does need to be connected to an iPhone during initial setup, but after that I don't think there's anything stopping me from giving my phone away and using the watch by itself. Many of the children I teach have an Apple Watch but don't own a phone yet.
If a company figures out how to make Apple products work with theirs, the line is between whether Apple modifies the firmware or future devices specifically to prevent this from working.
Could you explain your reasoning? I don’t see any moral difference between deliberately limiting compatibility from the peripheral side and doing so from the “computer” side (i.e., iPhone, iPad, Macintosh). One type of device may produce more inadvertent incompatibilities than the other, but that’s different.
Besides, I think this will create surprise and confusion for less technical users. In my experience, many will blame the incompatibility on whichever device is new, without understanding who is gating out whom. And even for technical users, consider CarPlay and Android Auto: From the phone’s perspective, the car is a peripheral, and that makes sense; but lots of people will still consider the car the “core device.”
I can also confirm the problem on a s23, airpods are the only Bluetooth devices which I've experienced cuts in the middle of the audio, similar to an old school radio
Have you tried with another device or just using a sample size of one?
I'm not a fanboy but I never use Airpods with any Apple product and I can use them properly without any hiccup with several others (windows, linux and android).
I’m pretty much the definition of an Apple fanboy - every device in my house is Apple (because the hardware works, is reliable and it works together). That said, I have one windows machine for work and my AirPods just don’t work with it.
Maybe the issue here is Samsung and not Apple. We owned 2 Samsung smartphone in the last 10 years and both would only accept to charge at a decent speed on with damsung chargers while other smartphones of the household would charge just fine with all of them.
When you pair AirPods with a non-Apple bluetooth device, you lose the automatic device switching is all. You can still "enter and exit" the Apple ecosystem with them by just going into Bluetooth settings and tapping on the AirPods and they'll reconnect to Apple-land and start switching again, and vice versa. Once paired with, say, Windows, it'll auto-connect or you can manually trigger it by just tapping them in Bluetooth settings.
Once paired, AirPods just work like any other bluetooth headphones.
My experience is that high end headphones from v-Moda and Plantronics are better about multi-device use with Windows and iPhone than the Airpods are, with those I can just play on whatever device and the right thing happens almost always.
Not always. My first gen airpods are unable to pair with Samsung phone. It just doesn't see them, regardless of whatever magic combinations of holds and presses I do. Thankfully they do work with my old iPhone, so they are not completely useless, but this is the last Apple branded periphery I will ever buy.
Personally I've tried the ones of my wife on my Galaxy S23 and I have frequent audio cuts, since it's the only Bluetooth device I've ever experienced that, there's some shenanigans for sure in their firmware.
I had a slightly older galaxy as my last android phone, and had this problem with the galaxy buds and with the anker ones I got to replace them. My experience with audio on android (Samsung and pixel) was overwhelmingly “this sucks” so I’m more inclined to blame android than apple here
Personally I never had any audio issues at all apart from pairing (but I also had this issue on iPhone, this is a general case of Bluetooth pairing sucks)
Used mine with a Galaxy S22 for about ~6 months, zero connectivity issues. Also given others also are saying they've had no issues I'd say it's pretty fair to assume this was an isolated problem unrelated to the topic at hand.
Yeah, connected a pair to a 2011 phone with Android 2.x (Gingerbread or something along those lines) just fine. Sound quality was even pretty good to my ears, whatever that bluetooth standard could push through the air
Yeah. I have a set of APP 3 (and previously the 2s) and both worked just fine with my Windows laptop, I use them daily with it and even bounce between Windows & my Apple Devices just fine.
I’ve long found that whole feud and dynamic odd, like humanity could learn some major things about inter-group dynamics and even psychology by studying and unlocking what it’s all about.
You have Apple users just happily going about their day, paying a premium because the things just work well enough together to the point that even the slightest hiccup feels like a major event, but the devices just meld into the background of their life and work.
Meanwhile you have Android, Linux, Windows zealots just brooding in dark corners, audibly grinding their teeth over the happiness and ease in which Apple users go about their day, not having to tinker and adjust and fix things and hunt down drivers and check compatibility and relearn every new device they come in contact with and the 38 different paths to accomplish simple tasks, seething with anger that Apple users don’t want to struggle and suffer too.
It’s just a bit of humor. I repent, I repent. You baby is just as pretty as all the other babies.
My experience, Apple people believe Apple products are flawless and when presented with a problem will find every reason to excuse Apple or say "I never do that".
User: Ran into a printing issue on my Mac
Fan: I never print, my Mac experience is flawless
User: Screen Mirror breaks all the time
Fan: I never use Screen Mirror. My Mac experience is it's flawless
User: For some reason my Airpods lose audio once in a while. The Mac shows they are connected. It shows the volume is up. It shows the video is playing. I end up having to reboot
Fan: You must be holding them wrong.
An old example, a friend with a Mac had trouble connecting to a samba share and blamed windows. It was documented that that was bug in Apple's implementation of the samba protocol. He still blamed the non-apple device. (this was like 2006)
I still see remnents of that today. Mac networking sucks (have 2 M1 Macs) as well as a windows pc. The PC networking is solid, connected to share, it never disconnects. The Macs disconnect constantly when switching VPNs etc. The Finder also often locks up. It's also noticablely slower to browse folders with lots of files.
IDK. I find people who really like Apple to be the most critical of Apple. When things don't work perfectly or something is a little off, they complain because their expectations are so high.
No one really cares that Windows has so many design inconsistencies, but Apple makes a change that isn't 100% consistent and people go crazy.
With that said, I'm like the person described to who you responded to. All my Apple things 'just work' better than any other computing devices I've used in the last 30 years, and I go on about my day not really thinking about it.
BTW, Macs made printing sane. There's a reason the old Windows MCSE tests felt they were 90% about printing problems.
This is also my experience, it's not necessarily Apple fans, people just get used to some garbage but necessary workflow/ritual and forget they are doing it.
I witnessed multiple colleagues and friends, who are avid and experienced MacOS users, struggle with basic tasks like ..finding the window of an open application after it was minimised, fullscreening applications, screensharing. Yet, somehow, none of that registered for them and their experience was still reported as flawless.
It sounds like you’re talking to some rather odd people with a strange combination of hyper devotion to Apple and high tolerance for features simply not working. I have seen plenty of people in the first camp though not nearly as much these days as I did back in the early 2010’s, but the second camp is strange to see given that’s a huge cornerstone of why people buy Apple (“it just works.” Or even the perception that it just works).
Screenshare works perfectly fine in my experience and I’m not really sure what you’re talking about with printing, but everyone’s experience differs I suppose
These are both very long-term games. I think preventing a trade war is definitely better on the short term so I'm not opposed to a softer flavour of these directives (it's not permanent after all, they can be adapted again). Than trying to push all the levers at the same time.
I don't agree there. These tariffs hurt the American people a lot more than they hurt us.
All this is pretty much inspired by the fears of the big car companies. But we're also buying a lot less American cars, Tesla for example has been decimated in Europe. And besides them there's only really Ford.
Besides Trump constantly changes the rules. For example with his 'trade deficit' he's only looking at goods, not services. When you consider the huge amount of money going to Microsoft, AWS, Google, there's not really any deficit. Trump just makes it all up as he goes along. You can't really respond seriously to that because you don't know what will happen tomorrow, he could change his mind again.
This should indeed be reported as illegal product tying to regulators (U.S. FTC/EU Competition commission/others?) so that Apple is legally deterred from breaking this interoperability effort with future AirPods updates.
Worse, now device manufacturers can now make their devices identify as "apple" out of the box and advertise it as "compatibility with Apple AirPods features X, Y, X" and be legally permissible.
It's basically the consequence Google v. Oracle and the cases leading to it.
It’s, hilariously, the opposite: the exposure of this idea makes every other product better and Apple can’t change it (until they do).
Product tying is not a thing you can bypass.
This is idea is independent of whether Apple’s strategy is good or bad, legal or not. Product tying can’t be undermined, or it’s not actually a problem.
Dongle-based license management or DRM isn't the same as product tying; each dongle just validates the license for the use of a piece of software. But forcing customers to only use ink cartridges from a specific brand, deliberately rejecting or invalidating third-party refill options? That is a form of product tying, and it is being deemed illegal in more and more countries.
This sounds like you were making some guesses, which turn out to be incorrect. You are saying that AirPods cannot connect to non-Apple devices, which is untrue. They function as regular Bluetooth headphones for any device.
You said when I asked which should get reported “Whatever is reported to iPhones. It's not an excuse to block non Apple devices from reading battery level”
Exactly how is Apple going to send information to none Apple devices using the BT protocol in a method that they can understand?
Ironically this is the main reason I did not buy AirPods for my Android phone, because they do not support this multi-device, nor advanced features on Android.
If they would be smart, they would financially support this project, as it is going to bring more sales, from users who anyway wouldn't switch to iPhone.
Idk, this is kinda like changing the user agent string to chrome for another browser to show that you have feature parity - it’s a hack but there aren’t good ways to signal which devices support some features of the AirPods.
The referenced Bluetooth bug on the Github readme seems like a pretty good reason. "We don't want to work around or deal with the bugs on other platforms" seems like a reasonable position.
This bug prevents injecting magic handshake that enables all features. It wouldn't be relevant if Apple didn't block these features in the first place.
Btw it's not some magic feature set they spent years to research. Sub $60 Soundcores have most of them if not all.
How was USB C on Apple a “mess” when it came out on the iPhone 14? It supported all of the standard USB protocols - video, networking, mass storage, audio etc.
Yeah, I don't think the connector criticism of Apple really stands up to any scrutiny. 30-pin was strictly better than USB-based solutions when it came out, as was Lightning. They supported both of those for a very long time and kept tons of iDevice accessories around the world functioning.
Yes because Apple has a monopoly on - Bluetooth headphones you can use with Android devices??
Do console makers have to make sure that their accessories work with other consoles? Do TV manufacturers have to ensure their remotes work with other TVs?
And no you never had to buy Apple branded or licensed charging cables.
Hearing aids are highly regulated in many markets, as they are medical devices. Not building and getting certification / approval doe software to support every operating system is far from ”criminal”
Having recently purchased "medical hearing aids" - as a tech user, they are complete garbage and if I did not get a "friends & family" discount, they would have been returned months ago...
I think the point is that selling a medical device that also requires you to use that vendors mobile device or lose access to them is just a little scummy. My motivation to keep using an iPhone shouldn't be that I'd need to buy new hearing aids if I left. Apple knows how this works, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
A set of airpods + the Minimum Viable iPhone to configure the them to work as hearing aids is way cheaper than standalone hearing aids. Regulatory fetishism around "medical devices" is exactly what enabled hearing aids to become a racket and to remain one long after the relevant electronics became a mass-produced consumer product.
Plus - the medical ones are horrible to use with an iPhone - barely enough volume for watching media - and music has absolutely no bass... (plus, they regularly "forget" their bluetooth sync connections...)
This is used to prevent devices that don’t know about those features from accidentally triggering them as they are not per spec (spec lacks way to do many things AirPods do).
And AirPods do connect to non Apple devices. They are just limited to doing what BT spec allows and no more
What do you mean by "multipoint spec"? I have written a few BT stacks (you might have even used one I wrote at one point or another) and I have no idea what you mean by that phrase. Please cite a section of the spec or proper name of what you are talking about.
They support HFP and A2DP and AVRCP, and properly, including all of those features working on android phones and proper switching between them as needed...
The argument (which I assume you deliberately ignored) is that those features, like battery reporting and multi device pairing, are being arbitrarily restricted by Apple to maintain a proprietary ecosystem.
How you could argue that this is a good thing tells me you're either too drunk on the corporate kool-aid or that you have some financial incentive to ignore the obvious problems with these facts.
Either way this is my last message in this thread as googling things for you is a bore.
So show me in the spec where one BT device as seen by the host can report the battery of three different battery levels - ie the case and two ear pieces.
The obvious solution would be to report the lowest number, as multiple replies to you have already proposed, but you again chose to ignore because it doesn't serve your agenda.
This entire thread started with you claiming Apple was somehow trying to prevent issues by hiding these features, and you've twice tried to move the goalposts to irrelevant points when given evidence to the contrary.
If you can't even defend your original position then I have no interest in continuing a discussion with Apple's most useful idiot.
The lowest level of the three is not a useful number. The case serves as a battery pack to recharge the headphones (something I did earlier today while on an international flight).
The reality is the sort of compatibility being talked about is a new feature with design choices, not just unwired functionality.
I'd rather them work on features to report charging time or expected playback time on iOS, or write their own app for Android, than try to arbitrarily increase their bluetooth profile compatibility checklist.
“the lowest number” would be completely useless. What would that tell me? Do I need to charge the case? So I need to put my left pod in the fully charged case? The right one?
The average between the two buds then, and rely on the LED for the case. This isn't that complicated guys, other earbud manufacturers somehow figured it out, I'm sure Apple can too.
Hyper-fixating on an issue with one part of the spec doesn't dismiss the larger problem being discussed. It's baffling (and kind of sad) how hard you guys feel the need to defend a trillion dollar company making obviously anti-consumer decisions.
How does the “average” help? It still isn’t actionable. It doesn’t tell me whether I need to charge my case, put my left AirPod in a fully charged case or put the right AirPod in a fully charged case.
If you know the average of those three, what does it tell you?
What other manufacturers have figured out how to report three devices that represent to a Bluetooth host as one device in a standards conforming way that will work across multiple hosts?
It’s not that I am defending a trillion dollar company - the idea of averaging three completely different devices is non sensical and provides absolutely no benefit to the end user. If you want ti complain about anyone - complain about the standards body.
You, like the person this thread started with, are (deliberately?) missing the fire in the forest because you want to talk about the state of one tree. Yes, the standard should be improved to support multi-part devices, nobody here is arguing against that.
This entire thread started with someone trying to claim that Apple was not in the wrong by restricting these features, of which battery reporting is A SINGLE ONE.
No, I don't have a perfect solution for this one specific part of the problem, but that's also not been the my focus the entire time. Getting dragged into the weeds only serves to distract from the actually important point here, which is that what Apple is doing is anti-consumer.
Let's first agree that Apple should play on even ground with everyone else, and then we can whinge over how to correctly report the battery of three components over a single connection. Yeesh.
Yes because it’s easy as long as you ignore the details. Speaking of which, how do you surface all of the other features of the AirPod using the Bluetooth protocol?
You claimed other manufacturers have “figured this out” - how?
Every single thing that you say Apple should do is about how Apple can do that in a method that conforms to the spec - you kind of have to “fixate” upon the spec if you claim that Apple isn’t conforming to the spec.
The battery reporting is the one you brought up and had only horrible ideas.
> Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook > Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features!
I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in.
EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine