Slashdot Mirror
The Death of Bluetooth?
Aaron Cherrington writes "Bob Frankston
has written an article
in which he declares that Bluetooth has
failed. The article states that despite the fact it is wireless, it still
has all of the limitations of wires. Is it too early to declare the death of
Bluetooth, or can we can expect more out of it?"
Oh, wait, PHB's read this stuff but not slashdot, nevermind.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
King Harald 'Bluetooth' (Danish Harald Blåtand) was the King of Denmark and died in 986AD.
/. this is *really* old news!
Come on
One big benefit of Bluetooth, as one of the user comments on the article's site stated, is it's low-power consumption. So for devices that don't require long distance connections (i.e. keyboard, mouse, cell phone, etc.), Bluetooth is a very convenient technology - WiFi is kinda overkill.
The suthor seems to think that Bluetooth will fail because it is not good for connecting to the Internet. Well, duh...
Bluetooth could be good for something else - Personal Area Networks (PAN). This would be used for connecting different portable devices without wires. Range would only be a meter or so, and connecting to the Internet would be right out. There is no sense in all devices trying to connect to the Internet, I only need one device to do that and then all other devices connect to *that device* wirelessly.
I wrote a journal entry about this very concept.
The point? Yes, Bluetooth is not as good as 802.11 for connecting to the Internet. There is, however, a huge field open for Bluetooth to fill. Unfortuantely, speed and availability seems to limit it.
I would look for Bluetooth-type technologies to take off in the near future, even if not to "connect to the Internet and compete vs. 802.11" The author seems to limit his thining to beleive that the only niche for Bluetooth would be to connect headsets to phones. Think outside the box a little, and Blueetooth has a huge opening and millions of uses.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Do you really need IP infrastructure to move packets between your pockets?
This is nuts. There's a niche for bluetooth. The whole p2p bluetooth PAN-in-your-PANTS thing may sound silly now, but my bag would be a lot lighter if I didn't have to carry so many dangly dongles.
I think its way too early to rule out Bluetooth.. it is still a relatively new technology, and its only now starting to see wider adoption - things like the Microsoft Bluetooth cordless desktop and the like have only been out for a few months!
Also heard about things like Bluetooth capable printers which sounds like a great idea.
I don't really see any suitable alternatives to Bluetooth as yet for short range wire-free communication between devices. The only thing that lets it down is the high cost of Bluetooth components in devices - on larger items like printers and expensive mobile phones this isnt too bad, but for smaller cheaper devices it kinda keeps the prices a little high!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
I agree that syncing a PDA over the internet or larger distances could be useful, and in that case 802.11 is your man. Bluetooth's goal is to replace short range connections, such as the near-useless IR (ever try aiming a PDA at your phone while as a passenger? I did, and I used velcro for the occasion...)
I was hoping this article wasn't going to be another Bluetooth vs 802.11 non-argument. guess I was wrong.
Read my lips.
THAT IS NOT WHAT BLUETOOTH IS FOR.
Bluetooth is for personal (that is, on your person) area networking.
It is, by design, a short-range, low-powered protocol. Your mobile phone is a radio with a range of two or three miles...why the hell do you want ANOTHER radio with a range of 30 feet (with the commensurate power consumption which maps directly onto weight) to communicate with a device that should be in your pocket anyway?
Bluetooth, when properly implemented, is great. It's not designed to be the only wireless protocol: It's narrowly designed to do one thing. Replace wires. That, it does well.
The article criticizes BT because it does exactly what it's designed to do. That's silly.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Bluetooth is widely used outside the US. And it works well for applications beyond headsets, like synchronizing PDAs and desktops, mobile web access from your PDA, and wireless printing. Bluetooth is far more secure for things like wireless keyboards and will probably take over in that area.
Bluetooth is easier to configure and administer than 802.11a/b/g--people can just do it themselves. And Bluetooth has much better battery life and smaller antennas.
I don't understand the reluctance of US cell phone carriers to offer Bluetooth-capable phones--they are not significantly more expensive than equivalent non-Bluetooth phones. I sometimes think that they don't offer it because they want to control how you access the Internet through their networks. With Bluetooth, you can easily and comfortably use your laptop or PDA, and your own software, to access the Internet through your cell phone. IR and wired, OTOH, iareso cumbersome that most people don't bother, if they are even available.
Look for Bluetooth for your next cell phone and PDA. Consider getting a Bluetooth access point for better battery life from your PDA and laptop. Bluetooth isn't expensive and it's pretty nice.
Note that there are long-range versions of Bluetooth (300ft) and that there are high-speed versions in development.
This story sounds like a wrap-up of an SNS issue, written by analyst Mark Anderson about half a year ago. Yes, Bluetooth has essentially failed to deliver promises on its wild popularity, and Wi-Fi is the NBT (Next Big Thing). However, it's important to remember that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were designed for different reasons.
If Bob Frankston were writing for an automotive magazine, he'd probably write a subheading 'Why has car business flourished while bikes have essentially failed? Should we even care about bikes?' If you want to connect to the Internet and have wireless access within your house or in the hotel room, use Wi-Fi. But what if all you want is to have devices talk to one another? Remote control to your car computer, telephone handset to the telephone base, PDA to the laptop, etc.? In some cases Bluetooth makes sense more than 802.11b, if you consider cost of deployment and power consumption issues.
Thus Bluetooth is not really a competitor, it's a niche technology that's out there and that's getting more attention from manufacturers. Wi-Fi is immensely bigger and more marketable, but in the nutshell Bluetooth has its own applications and will persist in hardware design for next few years.
The replies on zdnet pretty much sum up everything there is to say already: Bluetooth and 802.11b serve entirely different purposes. It's like saying "I don't understand why we have boats when cars are so good and popular". Bluetooth is for ad-hoc very-short-range wireless networks -- of *course* it's not going to succeed as a replacement for 802.11. But it doesn't need to, as they're not competitors.
I remember reading a while ago that the goal is to make it cost about $1.00 to add bluetooth to ANY device, *including* engineering costs. That might not be here yet, but it's somewhere that 802.11 isn't ever going to go.
it still has all of the limitations of wires.
Except for the *wires* part!
I have a bluetooth headset that I use with my cellphone and it's much more convenient than corded headsets which almost always get tangled and broken.
I have about 4 headsets here with the wires torn out of the earpiece which usually results from the wires getting caught on something while I'm running.
Bluetooth has its place. It's designed for PANs(personal area networks) where WiFi would be way overkill.
I've got a T68i. It syncs with Entourage on both my Power Mac and my iBook. It acts as a modem for my iBook when I need it. It interacts beautifully with the Address Book app on both Macs, letting me make and take calls and send and receive SMS. It works great with my Plantronics M1000 headset, letting me make and take calls in the car without having to take my eyes off the road, fumble around for the handset, or worry about catching wires on anything. And it does all of these things while still sitting in my pocket.
Bluetooth may not be perfect in its current incarnation, but it's a damn sight better than keying in all my contacts with a numeric keypad, or having to buy a stupid proprietary cable to connect the phone to anything.
~Philly
No. It's dead. 802.11x is a far better solutioin for most everything. 802.11x offers better speed, range and availabillity.
As already mentioned, Bluetooth is not intended to be a networking technology. It is one up from I-R and one down from Wi-Fi. Its one up to I-R because it allows simple devices, close together, to communicate together, simply, and not need to be in line of sight. It is one down from Wi-Fi because there is no need to use something this heavy duty to transfer simple data, doing so would simply be cost restrictive and over kill - this would be akin to using 4 ton truck for moving a box's worth of paper in your office.
People who understand Bluetooth are using it for things like wireless keyboards, mice and synching PDAs and mobile phone to PCs. Printers are a special case, since in most cases you would want to use Wi-Fi, but by using Bluetooth you allow a simple PDA to print out a document - I suppose printers are pushing Bluetooth to the limits of what it was designed for.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I responded (as have many slashdotters above) that surely the two weren't for the same task, and thus were surely destined to exist in parallel, in adjacent market sectors. He told me this wouldn't be true, and his explanation went something like this:
Bluetooth has two main selling points:
But, he predicted, both of these would be eroded quickly. The former would vanish, he said, when both bluetooth and 802.11 are cost-reduced down to single-chip solutions (which now they mostly are). Sure, the 802.11 chip is bigger than its bluetooth buddy, but the cost-differential is pretty slight.
The latter would still apply, but he predicted (and it's come true, although not yet productised) that the 802.11 folks would produce a low-power, short-range version.
So one of Bluetooth's advantages (for its own market) is largely obviated, the latter partially so. Set this against the economies of scale that 802.11 enjoys, and the greatly enhanced oppertunities for interoperation that the dominant standard enjoys, and the "roaming" use of Bluetooth is beaten, resoundingly.
Bluetooth had two other markets in mind:
- as a desktop "wire replacement", for keyboards, mice, etc., essentially replacing the many proprietary protocols in that space, and for stuff for which we now use USB. Bluetooth can't beat USB on cost or performance, which leaves only the mouse and keyboard market. Sure, it would be nice if your digital camera or mp3 player would just "see" the PC without your having to hook up some cables, but the cable burden isn't that onerous. Now, 802.11 may be cheap, but I think it'll be a few years yet before I have an 802.11 mouse. So there is a market there for bluetooth, but it's small, and bluetooth isn't compelling enough to displace the proprietary guys there.
- the true "personal area network", where all the devices I wear interact with one another, and dock to my pc when I sit at my desk. Well, all those devices (PDAs, cameras, cellphones, mp3) have (or are now) converging on a single device (which we call a phone, 'though it is many things besides). This leaves bluetooth with another thin market segment - connecting cellphones to PCs. Again, cheap fast cables, IRDA, and proprietary RF solutions all own this space, and again bluetooth isn't compelling enough to displace them.
Every product has to answer the same challenge - not "are you useful" but "are you useful ENOUGH".## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
What's wrong with wires? They tangle. They wad up in my pocket and make it harder to rig my earphone. I have to have a different one to perform each task (attach phone to PDA, attach PDA to GPS, attach GPS to computer, make up all your own permutations). They are expensive and fragile.
Do they have to be expensive? Of course they don't. It's a wire, with a plastic doohickey on each end. How many mobile electronics vendors are making universal cable systems? With the conspicuous exception of audio headphones, zero.
I hate wires. It's a problem I percieve, and a solution I'm willing to pay for. Therefore, from my perspective, it is good technology.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This focus on the Bluetooth headset is shortsighted. BT headsets might be the only currently useful thing to do with BT, but they get BT on devices. When BT gets on devices then you build a base of devices. When you have a base of devices then people start leaving their BT on all the time and they start thinking of interesting ways to use them.
I want:
- my BT headset to interface with my VOIPed home phone
- my BT cell phone to act as a wireless remote control for my TV
- a BT wireless remote to allow separate control over two identical cable boxes (try that with IR)
- a BT keyboard and mouse to interface with my BT smartphone
- to have all my wireless keyboards and mice work with all my computers and all my devices
- to have automatic sync between all of my devices simply by walking up to them
I'll get all of these things with BT because it's low powered, physically small and very cheap to implement in quantity. I'll never get all of these things if I try to get them with 802.11.
TW
This article is mislead in so many ways. People here have covered the fact that BT and WIFI are ment to co-exist, so I'll skip that.
Anyone who have seen an Apple intergrate with an Ericsson t68i will be convinced that BT is a killer app. It works seamlessly and is so beautifully integrated that I could cry with joy when I get to send an SMS on-screen "just like that".
BT suffers from ONE thing only. Bastard companies that love proprietary devices. Like Nokia. Nokias BT headset twists the BT regulations by transmitting the audio through data profiles, not audio profiles like it is supposed to. So you can't get cheat headsets for Nokia until someone makes a data-only headset. This is killing BT, not lack of usage. BT along with Airport is a marriage made in heaven.
Visit us in Europe, and see that BT is in daily usage mr. Frankston.
BONUS: Try the Bluetooth pic-swap-game! The rules are simple. Be sure to have a cool picture of yourself on your fancy-schmancy phone. Nudeness optional, but recommended. Keep Bluetooth enabled on the phone (Notice how this does not drain your batteries like you were jump-starting an F-16) When bored, search for other phones in public places. When you finde a phone, transmit the picture and it will pop up like a message on the other phone. If the other person is cool and tech-savvy like you, (s)he will transmit a pic back. Yay!
I don't want a PDA/phone. That means I can't use the PDA and talk on the phone at the same time. And devices that try to comprimise between PDA and phone functions are generally not that good at either.
What I do want is a phone headset that I can use without risk of garroting myself. And I want to browse the web using a portable device I already own and am familiar with: a Palm m515.
If the restriction to Bluetooth applications is, "The phone must be in your pocket, not on your desk," I think I can live with that!
Bluetooth by itself is not a big deal. But combined with technology like Apple's Rendezvous, it's really cool. Apple seems to be imagining a future where you can walk around with your laptop, and services like printers become available immediately when they come within range, then disappear when you go out of range. To Apple, Bluetooth seems to be all about service discovery.
I think we're just waiting for the killer app. Syncing your cell phone may be fun, and cordless keyboards and mice may be cool, but neither are as big a deal as wireless Internet access on your front porch.
I haven't given up hope, though. Since Bluetooth is cheap and low-power, it's not going anywhere soon.
I agree that Bluetooth needs to hit a certain density in common consumer goods before it will be really useful, but some of your examples are pretty unlikely to be part of that process.
Point-by-point:
- A Bluetooth headset would make a terrible home-phone add-on; I expect my cordless phone at home to at least function throughout the main floor of my house, if not into the yard, basement, etc. With a Bluetooth headset, I wouldn't be able to move more than a few paces from the wired phone line.
- Remote control applications could be good, but again, depending on environmental radio noise, etc., I'd probably prefer for my TV to stick with IR. Of course, I don't really watch TV, so I can't speak to how convenient it is to not have to keep track of a seperate remote.
- As for the Bluetooth remote for two boxes, that's (AFAIK) a hypothetical future product which could be accomplished just as easily with a properly implemented IR system. Again, the radio noise and lack of range would also make me think twice about replacing infrared.
- The keyboard and mouse are definitely a useful thing, whether they're connecting to a phone, PDA, or even a desktop PC.
- See above
- Again, device synchronization is one of the most logical (and already well-supported) uses for Bluetooth. If you (or a friend or coworker) have access to a recent-model Mac, you should check out iSync with the built-in Bluetooth adapters. My roommate has a Sony/Ericsson Bluetooth-enabled phone, a Palm Tungsten T, and a new 12" PowerBook, all of which link up and sync nicely via iSync. (Now, if only T-Mobile would get a clue on their GPRS pricing, we could all start chucking out our old 56k modems.)
As for the size and cost of Bluetooth, well...it's really not significantly cheaper or smaller than 802.11b. They both work on similar frequencies, with similar degrees of signal processing complexity. The main differences come from 802.11b being at least an order of magnitude more powerful a signal, and requiring more processing power to take advantage of the bandwidth it offers (which is about *two* orders of magnitude greater).
For extremely low-bandwidth connection of I/O devices and short-range transfer of compact binary data, Bluetooth has some real potential. Much of it's vaunted simplicity and cost savings, though, are simply industry hype, generated largely by the same companies that are trying to sell Bluetooth chipsets and design services to electronics manufacturers, and those manufactorers who are trying to push consumers to upgrade to the new top-of-the-line models that support it.
There were approximately 10m PDAs sold worldwide in 2002. Of those, around 4m were sold in the United States. That's somewhere around 1.5% of the population. Even assuming that many people already had PDAs, that's maybe 3% of the population. In short -- only rich businessmen (and technophiles who always buy the latest gadgets). And that's PDAs sold. PDAs used is probably much lower -- while I only two 2 people who use PDAs, I do know around 10 people who have PDAs (most got them as presents and haven't used them since the initial tinkering around). Hell, I myself have a PDA (Dell Axim X5) I got for free, but I haven't really used it, because I just don't see what it's good for.
Where am I basing my personal observations? A computer science department at a university, of all places. One prof. and one departmental secretary has a PDA, the rest don't. And that's much higher than in the non-CS departments, where absolutely nobody has one. It's the same many other places. My dad's company gave away free PDAs to their engineers, but only around maybe 10% of them actually use their PDAs.
Cell phones have a much greater market penetration.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Same argument applied to USB.
And, fortunately, Apple is here to make a potentially useful technology ubiquitous again.
Just because you don't think the technology is useful doesn't make it not useful for other people. Fortunately, when a market works properly, your needs, and the needs of others, are addressed by different products.
People who only want to make calls will buy a phone that only makes calls. People who want to do other stuff will buy phones that can do other stuff.
What's the point of deriding a system that other people find useful?
So, again, what's your point?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
People who understand Bluetooth but are clueless about security?
You're right that Bluetooth lacks any real security, but by being an ultra short range technology the risk of snoopers, and anonymous at that, is reduced greatly. If someone is snooping, then the person snooping is already within an eye-shot or hearing range. Until encryption can be added without adding to the price of the technology, then it is a risk that should be taken into account.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
He's just pining for the fjords!