[pwinnski]

Most of the problems seem to be poor implementations, because what's the motivation for, say, a car company to get Bluetooth exactly right? How many people buy cars based on the speed with which Bluetooth connects?

As evidence, sticking with a single vendor means I don't have weird stuff happen, and can in fact connect multiple pairs of AirPods to a single Apple TV unit so my partner and I can watch together in outward silence.

I still cannot, as far as I know, connect a single pair of AirPods to more than one device, but that doesn't seem like a feature anybody would have considered when initial developing the BlueTooth spec. Perhaps such a feature will come soon, at least with a single vendor solution like Apple's.

[lotsofpulp]

>How many people buy cars based on the speed with which Bluetooth connects?

I would not rank Bluetooth itself as being high on the list of wants for a car, but I would rank quality wireless Carplay / Android Auto functionality pretty high (along with a wireless charging mount). If it is possible, but I have not seen that it is yet. Until then, wired CarPlay / Android Auto works fine. And lack of CarPlay / Android Auto is a dealbreaker.

[saiya-jin]

Apple demands a hefty price for this compatibility, and its purely within their tiny ecosystem. Which is OK, they do premium hardware and software, some of it top of the notch. Some other manufacturers are trying this but they are nowhere near this level of quality.

The problem I have are the parts where they are not top of their game, ie earbuds. If your only requirement is good call quality then their products can be titled best if paired with ie iphone. But I don't care about that at all. I bought ones which sound for music significantly better than airpods pro, have much better battery life (also their case has better battery for recharging and overall stamina). When yet better ones come (or I lose mine), I will go again for the best within my budget, easily from another manufacturer since brand loyalty is rather meaningless fluff for me, only quality of specific product matters.

But - I can't connect them to any apple product via high quality variations of codecs. So instead of using aptX HD to play my flacs in phone, I would have to resort to some basic implementation and effectively cut off some quality of those flacs. I am sure some wouldn't mind, but I do.

Hence you do shopping around, because in +- apple price bracket you have tons of options for quality hardware, be it notebooks, tablets, different headphones and so on.

This opinion doesn't take into account things like apple's stand on privacy on phones, which for many puts them above rest of the market. Suffice to say for me its more a case of clever marketing than actual proper security of such an important device, especially since I am not an US person and some US laws see me as sub-human, thus US 3-letter agencies act accordingly. But maybe I am completely wrong on this part, it would actually be great since I am already spending same dollars, just for other brands. Just haven't seen a single solid proof of that, and quite a few in contrary.

[AlotOfReading]

The size of the paired devices list isn't even in the spec. It's entirely up to the manufacturer. All the spec tells you to do is store the specified info somewhere and gives an error code to be returned if you can't for some reason. 8 is typical, but there are various reasons you might want to chose 1 instead. It simplifies and speeds up reconnection, eliminates unnecessary button combos, and potentially reduces BOM cost, etc.

[jrmg]

The reason (or a reason, at least) we have poor implementations, though, is that the protocol stack is so incredibly complicated.