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by trissylegs 759 days ago
Another frustrating behavior form Apple is:

* My macbook will leave bluetooth on while it's closed and asleep.

* My BT headphones will connect to my phone and laptop if they're both on me. (It supports 2 simultanous connections)

* If I play music or podcasts I can pause through the headphones

* If I try to play it again it the "Play" action goes the macbook. (Which is effectively off so nothing happens)

* I now cant play anything on my phone. Hitting play on the app will fail.

* If I open the macbook now it will open Apple Music

* Otherwise I can hit the play/pause on my headphones then hit play on my phone it will work again.

What a bizarre useless behaviour. Why not just turn bluetooth OFF when my laptop is asleep. (It will also remain connected to wifi hotspot prevent my phone from auto-disabling wifi hotspot which has caught me a few times)

8 comments

Hello, I also hate that bluetooth stays on while my mac is sleeping, a few years ago I found this utility to fix it: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze/, my only issue with it is that if I sleep and wake the laptop in quick succession sometimes bluetooth stays off, but I can live with that.
Fix this with bluesnooze: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze
As a MBP user (for dev because the hardware is so good), it annoys me to no end that macOS comes up short in so many basic ways that requires patching with so many third party tools to make it not annoying. Even basic window tiling is just terrible and requires a third party add-on to make it functional.
Every Apple user has this complaint at some point with some feature, and either buckles and just accepts the Apple way or, very very rarely, will go to the effort of installing something to deal with it.

Apple's foundational ethos is that they pick a single implementation and run with it, only making it configurable if held at gunpoint.

Which if I'm honest I'm almost always fine with, as long as the way they ran with is polished as hell.

It's when the way they obviously want you to do things is flakey and doesn't work that it becomes super annoying.

As a long term apple customer I would be happy to throw away out of the window every single device and their entire walled ecosystem in face of a decent alternative.

Unfortunately (or thankfully, depends on standpoint) the benefits outweigh nuisances.

I feel the same way. When I look at my aging Apple computer(s) I think about all the annoying OS choices that they made that are difficult or impossible to configure away or work around, and I tell myself, "That's it. My next computer will not be Apple!" But, then I look and see the shit that every other manufacturer offers and I can't believe how bad it all is. The hardware is mostly cheap, cheesy, flimsy, plastic garbage, and the software choices are 1. Windows which is so intrusive and user-hostile that I consider it malware and 2. Linux which has been perpetually "will be ready for prime time about 2 years from now." The last time I upgraded Debian on my home lab server, it failed and I had to boot in single user mode to carefully fix it so it would even boot.

Fortunately, Apple's hardware almost always 2X+ outlasts its software support, so I won't have to make an actual buying decision for many years.

When my friends ask why I choose macbook air & iphone my explanation is that they simply "suck less".

Pretty sad when that's the best way to choose.

Agreed, the Amethyst team is doing saintly work over there.
Man I really tried to like Amethyst, but I just...hated it. BetterSnapTool works well for me.
I loved BetterSnapTool, but I'm glad my workflow has simplified to the point where allowing my windows to be subjected to the tyranny of a dynamic tiling window manager actually made sense, and now I feel more at home than ever!
I used Magnet before Big Sur, but have actually since switched to using Stage Manager. With multiple screens, I find that I seldom need more than two active apps simultaneously, and it actually helps me manage my focus better.
It really depends on the size and resolution of your screens and use case. If you're using wide, high resolution screens, I really want to be able to place multiple windows in different arrangements on one screen for app development.

I find myself constantly shuffling windows around on my setup.

Yeah, I thought so too, but I find the exact configuration of which windows I want open and how big I want each one does change a lot.
That is a frustrating experience for audio. However, I do enjoy tapping my external BT keyboard / trackpad to wake my MacBook while it’s in clamshell mode connected to my monitor.
If only there was a way for the OS to distinguish input devices from output devices...
They would have to have categories for Bluetooth devices such as human interface devices like keyboards (let's call them "HID"s) and audio devices. I dunno, seems like a lot of hard-to-implement monkey business.
Linux definitely does this. What different DEs do with it is sometimes suspect. But BT keyboard definitely wakes my GNOME environment, while it does not stay connected to my headphones.
I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm highly confident that GP is mocking Apple's implementation. HID has been a standard for a long time and is already widely available on every platform.
Oh, I am absolutely 100% mocking Apple's implementation. I have a house full of Apple gear, but that doesn't prevent me from shaking my head from time to time when I come across boneheaded stuff like this.
I wish I could turn this off. I keep bumping the mouse and waking my desktop which then takes a while to suspend again. But for some reason it’s not configurable.
Like the categories they use to show a headphone, keyboard or mouse icon next to a device in the Bluetooth menu?
yes, but with some method for programmatically reading the icon so they can know what type it is
Machine learning would make that task fairly trivial. Much like the TV show Silicon Valley, but instead of "not hotdog", "not headphone" and then treat it like a keyboard.
This behavior is extremely frustrating. I have a pair that only supports one device, and on the occasion that I connect them to my MacBook and forget to unpair or turn off Bluetooth afterward, they will permanently be usurped by Apple Music -- computer awake or asleep -- and my phone never stands a chance.
I actually think Apple is the reason why newer headphones are starting to support two devices. Apple makes a decision for themselves and it forces entire industries to move that direction. As someone who hates the Apple approach (please give me the Woz machine: more ports, more open, more hackable, more mine), it is painful to watch. Yes I'm still bitter about headphone jacks :-D
What if you have a personal MacBook *and* a professional MacBook? Well they occupy the two available seats from the “multi-point” system of the Bose QuietComfort 45 and my issue is not solved.
Indeed, that's a good point. And increasingly is the case for people.
I've gotten in the habit of explicitly disconnecting my headphones from all but the device I'm actually using, typically my phone. I haven't had these kinds of problems since, but what I gain in control, I lose in flexibility. Typical Apple.
Thieves in San Francisco take advantage of the first one to check if there are goods in cars.
Whoa how do we know about this?
Honestly I doubt they bother with that when they can just randomly smash open 10 cars to check them in the time it would take to do a Bluetooth scan.
The "time" it would take to do a Bluetooth scan? What are you talking about? There are free apps that will instantly show Bluetooth signal when walking past.
There is no way to work out which car it’s coming from without a bunch of sophisticated hardware and effort.

Have you seen how these people work? They drive up, stop next to a car, tap the window with a window breaker, pull the chair down to look in the boot, grab anything they find, then drive off.

In and out within a minute. No time to be dicking around with Bluetooth scanners to see if there are MacBooks around.

You are very incorrect, but there's no point in going back and forth on this given how far off we are on claims.

Suffice it to say I have talked, personally, to enough bippers to understand that there are 'spotters' and 'bippers', and which one uses the cell-phone based Bluetooth scanner (which requires no 'hardware' or 'effort' to figure out the source of a BLE signal.)

Exactly. Thank you. Apple please fix this. I buy 300$ headphones and >2000$ laptop and can’t listen to music.
Out of interest, what is the model of headphones? Asking as I’ve not seen this with Beats, Apple or Sony.
I have the Bose QuiteComfort and the latest M2 Macbook Pro.
Huh I’m glad I have AirPods, they work perfectly in this scenario. One of those Apple ecosystem things I guess.