Of course it isn't. The time of interoperable standards in consumer devices is long past.
Bluetooth used to support file transfers from device to device on feature- and early smartphones no matter the brand; now there's AirDrop (and maybe sometimes Google Nearby, but only if the humidity and lunar phase is just right).
In home audio streaming, there was once DLNA; now there's AirPlay and Google Cast.
We have two mutually incompatible walled gardens, and while life within them is admittedly nicer than in a world of poorly-implemented standards, the walls are getting higher by the day.
Good call out, it’s incredible we went from local file transfers with Bluetooth to needing an internet connection to transfer to a person sitting next to you just because they have a different OS. If only the EU could pressure the big folks to adopt one wireless transfer protocol like it did USB C recently with Apple.
Oh, my (optimistic, but I think not unrealistic) read of the DMA is that this is the case already!
There are clauses in there that mandate gatekeepers to give access to all kinds of interfaces only accessible to the native OS or first-party apps. I'd expect AWDL/AirDrop to match the type of thing the EU wants Apple to open up quite nicely.
If Google had any interest in shaking the duopoly, they'd of course be first to request Apple to open up AirDrop access to Android.
Realistically we'll hopefully see at least some third-party app vendor that bridges the gap with something that doesn't need an install on both iOS and Android, since in many AirDrop scenarios people don't have time, knowledge, or a network connection to install some unknown third-party app.
Bluetooth file transfer was always nearly useless in my experience, airdrop was somewhat revolutionary in that it actually worked reliably most of the time
AirDrop has its issues too. Used to work in educaiton at a school with 100+ iPads within reception range. Quite common to have A-to-B drops work but not the reverse direction i.e. B-to-A. Solution was often to ask another student C and use their iPad as a proxy i.e. B-to-C-to-A to get something from B to A. Quite fustrating given it would be an issue one day and not the next and what device it appeared on was totally random too. The same device B would send/receive fine to other devices but just not to A, and A itself would send/receive file to others but just not to B! No rhyme or reason to it, and of course being Apple no way to properly debug it.
maybe that's why the volume controls on my 1st-gen se no longer apply when using a bt-speaker. granted it's dated hardware on both ends but it used to work fine for 5y+
Bluetooth was always insanely reliable for me for file transfers even on phones and PCs that were a decade apart in manufacturing date. It was slow, but for a lot of things that was fine, and it was the obly way to get data from some really old phones.
For me, reliability has been similar. I will say that it is much faster, though (no wonder – hundreds of Mbit/s over 802.11 vs. 2 Mbit/s over Bluetooth EDR). UX is much better too.
But would it kill them to just support both? I’d take sometimes janky, always slow transfers to Android over having to WhatsApp photos to somebody literally next to me any day.
Oh sure, it would be a great opportunity, but the idea of Apple voluntarily interoperating with anyone else on most things is just funny to think about.
Google isn't significantly better on that metric, of course, but I feel like it's often in Google's business interests to interoperate more often than it is in Apple's.
Bull. That’s why I put the comment in parentheses.
They had already switched their laptops to all USB-C many years ago. And iPad Pros. I think the iPad Air and iPad (no name) switched as well.
There were also strong rumblings Apple was going to release the USB-C iPhones when the rule was passed.
> They tend to oppose standards they aren't already using.
You’re kidding right? Then explain USB. Or Thunderbolt. Of every other thing I listed above. Apple didn’t invent any of them and open them. They were all existing standards.
So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?
Sure, and they're now allowing game streaming apps and retro emulators on iOS because that's what they always knew was best for the world anyway. What a coincidence (with the DMA, in that case)!
> Apple didn’t invent any of them and open them. They were all existing standards.
Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.
Another counterpoint: Thunderbolt wasn't an open standard until very recently, and I can only imagine that Intel gave Apple some heavy discounts on the controller chips used (or even their main CPUs) to push the standard.
Apple doesn't always hate standards and interoperability, but they will absolutely try to push their proprietary protocols and interfaces whenever it's in their business interest.
USB-C didn’t exist when they went to Lightning, it wasn’t an option.
The fact all their other products were moving seems to indicate they’d move to USB-C on the iPhone as well. Rumors had them working on it for years.
Now maybe it would have come out this year and not last.
MagSafe: they added something back. You can still charge with USB-C. Works fine, I do it.
Thunderbolt: that wasn’t Apple. Intel invented it and Apple put it to use. I have no idea if it’s open or closed, that’s my fault. What I meant was it wasn’t an Apple invention. Besides, what else had that kind of bandwidth at the time in a cable? It’s not like there was some common better thing they shunned.
Counter-counterpoint: When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, they described it as their connector "for the next decade".[0] Their switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone came just over ten years after that announcement. Perhaps it was EU regulation, or perhaps it was Apple wanting to make good on a ten-year-old promise of connector continuity.
> Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.
They added MagSafe and still kept USB C charging.
> So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?
> They had already starting to move iPads to USB C
Which they're explicitly selling as laptop alternatives, at least the Pro line.
People were already connecting all kinds of things (audio interfaces, mice, ethernet adapters etc.) to iPads using the hilariously named lignting-to-USB-host "camera adapter", and all of that is just better over USB-C.
On the iPhone, the vast majority of people only use the port for charging and maybe listening to music; the few additional iPhone sold to people that actually use them with external storage for ProRes cinematography probably pales in comparison to the lost revenue from MFI license fees.
When the camera adapter was first released, usb-c didn’t exist.
And how much do you think Apple really made on MFI licenses as a percentage of revenue? It was a rounding error and many of the knocks off people bought from Amazon weren’t even licensed.
Excatly right. They switched to USB-C only on certain classes of devices and even then only over a incredibly long period of time when they could have moved all of their devices over to USB-C fairly quickly given their vertical integration advantages. It's interesting how my non-Apple ecosystem has me using USB-C across all devices across multiple manufacturrs but my Apple friends have multiple cables/chargers/etc to accomodate Apple's approach of using different standards across their own product lines. Thankfully EU has made this a thing of the past but if it wasn't for EU there'd be no change or it would have happened years from now.
Perhaps it was EU regulation, or perhaps it was Apple wanting to make good on a ten-year-old promise of connector continuity. When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, they described it as their iPhone connector "for the next decade".[0] Their switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone came just over ten years after that.
Boy did they ever get hell when they left the 30-pin connector. I could easily see them wanting to avoid that whole mess again.
Honestly I am still blown away that the switch last year to USB-C was met with some positivity (often from tech people) and a bunch of ’meh’. I was expecting tons of screaming and “Apple’s making you buy all your cables again to juice their books!”
I don't know the answer but I agree this tech should be standardized. Over time there will be a massive network of phones and tags capable of finding each other, but it's silly to bifurcate it such that you might not find your device because nobody on the "correct" network is nearby.
Couldn't agree more – just like it's quite silly to not be able to "AirDrop" a photo to an Android device, even though Bluetooth could do it just fine 20 years ago from a Nokia to an Ericsson or Motorola.
