is there evidence it’s for vendor lock in purposes? airpods have a pretty stellar connection for bluetooth, wouldn’t be surprised if there were performance reasons for them going off spec

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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I doubt it’s for any reason at all. The obvious explanation is that they just developed and tested these extra firmware features against Apple devices because that was the product decision. Since nobody was tasked with targeting Android they might not have even noticed that it wasn’t perfectly spec-compliant if those states were never encountered, nor expected to be encountered.

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gf000 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

if (name == 'APPLE') will surely improve performance.

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fouc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Assuming they even went off spec at all.

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wolpoli 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Apple is a promoter member of the Bluetooth standard organization for a while now, so it could submit that as an enhancement.

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indentit 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Specifications are there for a reason... Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?

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helsinkiandrew 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can still connect AirPods to an android device using Bluetooth, you just don’t get the seamless connection or support for Spatial Audio that use the extended protocols

	▲	gf000 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You can't even change noise cancel's mode.

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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?

Because they needed a way to get audio to the AirPods wirelessly and to work with their devices? That’s a pretty good reason to use Bluetooth.

I doubt they got together and tried to scheme a way to break Bluetooth in this one tiny little way for vendor lock in. You can use the basic AirPod features with other Bluetooth devices. It’s just these extended features that were never developed for other platforms.

HN comments lean heavily conspiratorial but I think the obvious explanation is that the devs built and tested it against iPhone and Mac targets and optimized for that. This minor discrepancy wasn’t worked around because it isn’t triggered on Apple platforms and it’s not a target for them.

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fouc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps Apple correctly implemented the specification here

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binkHN 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is Microsoft's playbook from many years ago: embrace, extend, extinguish.

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potatoproduct 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Performance reasons LOL. Apple fans love plausible deniability.