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Rob Enderle Announces Death of Bluetooth
prostoalex writes "Rob Enderle is typing away (perhaps even on his very own Ferrari laptop) at Intel Developer Forum, noting that Intel gave up on IEEE Ultrawideband and decided to switch to Wireless USB derivative. This, in Mr. Enderle's opinion, signifies the end of life for Bluetooth standard, although Enderle calls Bluetooth 'dead' in the title of the article and 'all but dead' in the actual text."
Netcraft confirms... Bluetooth is dy--- err skip it.
Anyway, slashdot, what are you thinking? You first show how retarded this fellow is by linking the story about the ferrari laptop. You then proceed to start to post other stories by this fellow. Don't you think that the credibility of this fellow has long since gone down the toilet after an article about his laptop that goes vroom?
Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has a voice. What's next? A BSD-is-dead troll getting linked on the front page? Seriously guys ;)
I hope everybody realizes that linking to this fellow's posts will only validate him, even if it's for the purpose of laughing at his assertions, calling him wrong, whatever. Sorry, but I don't trust reviewers that get a kick out of a car sound starting up a laptop, just like I don't trust the technical opinion of someone who discovers that they don't have to hear "You've got mail" when they get a new message.
I don't think he deserves the time of day after the last story. And if anybody disagrees with me here, by all means reply to this and say why I'm wrong.
</rant>
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
With articles like this, isn't is obvious Enderle just wants to garner attention. And slashdot seems to be giving him just that. I wonder whether he wants to float an IPO soon, and pull of another SCO.
My mom never taught me to sign.
gave up
That doesnt mean Apple, cell-phone manufacturers and other peripheral manufactuters will.
I always thought it was...then I didn't...then I did...and now I'm sure it's not.
Looking at the Dude with the Ferarri laptop's website sold me.
"The Enderle Group provides an unparalleled look underneath breaking technology events to identify the core reasons that buyers and builders of this technology should care. The stated goal for the firm is "to bring diverse and challenging views into technology advisory services and consulting"."
If anyone can totally misjudge the future of a product or technology, it's a consultant.
Linux is dead. Windows is dead. BSD is dead. Slashdot is dead.
We've heard in all before. If it's true or not, only time will tell.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Not to sound like an all knowing leet mac user, but I think bluetooth will be dead when Apple stops including it as an option on the Macs.
:-)
:-)
Apple by it's nature seems to be a good indicator of what's in. Apparently USB was around for a while, but didn't really pick up until Apple added it to it's machines. Look at Wi-Fi/Airport, Apple was one of the first companies to include it and make it standard.
Ditto with Bluetooth. Them Mac users will jump on anything Apple sugar coats and make it viable
Feel free to correct me if I've made erroneous assertions. Thanks
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Is it me or are companies jumping way too far ahead and losing sight of some really cool things. So we hear every other week about how XCompany just broke the terrahertz chip barrier for what? They're still only offering gigahertz chips. YCompany is making a terrabyte disk the size of a peanut... So why aren't they selling it.
Companies really make me laugh sometimes. LaCie recently announced that terrabyte 'affordable' drive for I think it was under a grand. Yet you could buy ten 100gig drives for about that price... What's the big deal?
It seems as the time goes on companies rush to bring out the latest hype to let it all fall down. As they invent new gizmos, and standards, they seem to kill it the minute it is actually being used to bring out (*drum roll please*) the newest gizmo and standard. So what's left after they run through every possible combination of ideas, and technologies? Makes me think of history and older civilizations that kind of imploded on advancements.
MoFscker
This is the same guy who was shown Linux code and told it was stolen from SCO--he then parroted the same crap to help boost SCO's stock prices. This guy's on the opposite end of "tech expert"--please don't feed or publicize this troll.
...yeah. Bluetooth is dead.
So don't tell Apple. Or ANY of the folk who make PDAs and accessories with Bluetooth capabilities.
Out of curiosity, am I the only one who hadn't heard of "Wireless USB" before this article?
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
Tapwave Zodiac 2
HP IPAQ H4350
SONY CLIE PEG-UX50
etc..
Smaller devices have finally started to rely on bluetooth as a means to communicate with a variety of nearby electronics. BMW's have built in bluetooth that allows one to use a bluetooth enabled phone through their steering wheel, there are probably 10 different bluetooth enabled GPS receivers designed for use with PocketPC and PalmOS. We've been hearing about the death of bluetooth since the year it came out, and for some time it looked likely, but not anymore. There are far too many useful devices that have come out in the last year which have made great use of bluetooth. Is it going to die someday? Obviously. But not as long as products keep shrinking and the need for close-proximity communication continues to rise at the same rate that market forces demand lower pricing.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Thus bluetooth will continue to be used for the things that it is being used for. Thus it will proliferate more and more every year there is nothing else.
Thus bluetooth is NOT dead. In fact I would say that it is merely in its teenage years. And as long as it can stay off the heavy drugs it should be alive for many years to come.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I think people would've identified better, and felt a sense of kinship with Bluetooth had it been called Yellowtooth. That said, bluetooth chipsets are embedded in millions of cellphones at the moment, and Metcalf's law will only serve to increase that unless a real replacement with sufficient momentum comes along. It's a protocol designed with low power reqs, and has good enough bandwidth for the sort of things that use it.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
There's no need to wirelessly communicate with an iPod. MP3 players of all kinds will always have to spend time in a docking station... wireless delivery of power still has some serious bugs in it that prevent it from being used in consumer devices.
There is no need for a high-bandwidth solution to do wireless accross a desk. There's no such thing as a desk that it's impossible to string a wire accross. And, so long as we're always running a wire for power, we might as well run one for data too...
I use Bluetooth every day. My GF uses it. My IT-clueless friend who works as a manager worships it. So for us in Europe, it isn' anything to declare alive or dead, we're too busy using it.
But it seems that for once, USA was a bit slow to catch on with the whole BT thing. We have been using BT for almost two years now, and most here look upon it as an intergral part of cellular life. Kids in class pass notes with it, adults use it for headsets and syncing, etc. But he is right about the MS mouse. You're welcome to read my experiences with the MS BT Mouse here on Slashdot. If you can find that old comment...
Well, the mere fact that Apple has begun to push Bluetooth indicates that it's probably going to survive. After all, who had even heard of USB before the iMac had it? Very few x86 computers had it, Apple made it standard on the iMac, and now every single x86 motherboard I see at Fry's has USB. Sure it can be argued that this wasn't entirely Apple, but even so, they accepted it and it is now standard. They accepted Bluetooth, so it's probably not going anywhere, whether it's Apple keeping it alive and driving acceptance or whether Apple just sees a good thing.
The only reason they're claiming that bluetooth is dead is because they missed the boat on creating/shipping products that use it. Its like Microsoft saying linux is dead or Redhat saying windows is dead...
If you can't sell your product, create a new one and claim the old one is "dead"...
Is this going to become a regular feature like all the SCO related articles. One rediculous article after another by this imbecile Rob Enderle. How much bigger of an ass could he have shown himself to be with that rediculous article about his Ferrari laptop. We'd all be better of not hearing from the guy ever again.
Yes, but who uses a Palm to browse the web while walking? Honestly...imagine the lamppost related lossage! IMAGINE IT!
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
I am viewing Slashdot on a Powerbook with a bluetooth mouse. My bluetooth phone is a few feet away and its bluetooth headset is next to it. This seems to be common among posters tonight. Bluetooth this and Bluetooth that all hooked up to an Apple.
/. readers). Most of them are PC users (no suprise), but I have been switching many to Mac. As far as Bluetooth goes, as long as Windows is not involved in any way, it seems great. I hear nothing but horror stories when Windows is involved. I only recomend Bluetooth enabled products to non-Windows users. When they ask what it is while they are looking at a PDA, I tell them and quickly move on lest they get the idea that they want to try it. If they do, it will probably be returned because it doesn't work.
I work in a computer store. I hear all about what works and doesn't work for the average user (not
Does Intel matter? Probably. If they say it is dead and it disapears from PCs, that will be no problem. Many devices work together without Wintel machines. Macs will still work with them; they always did. If Windows support is dropped, have we really lost anything?
Well, Bluetooth rocks, but iSync is astonishingly slow compared to (for instance) Palm Desktop.
I really hope Apple fixes it at some point, because I hate having time to go get a cup of coffee waiting for my T68i and iPod to sync because I want to install software to my Tungsten T3.
What do you think of the BT200? I'm in the market for a bluetooth headset. Does it work with both the phone and the Powerbook?
a friend introduced me to bluetooth a couple of years ago and i was 'ho hum', i had the feeling then and do now that bluetooth will end up much as isdn did, first out of the gate and will end up mostly forgotten. just a hunch
As much as i dislike usb on a technical POV, it purpose for low speed devices like KBs mice personal printers scanners cameras and so on makes a wireless variant stronger. because 1) its already pervasive, and given point 1, the wireless part can be handled at the low level in firmware and no one has to retool rework or reprogram for another wireless API.
Was it ever alive?
When I first heard of bluetooth several years ago I was excited that there finally was a new wireless standard coming around and we could stop using flaky IR. Years passed. 802.11 arrived. More pherperials used RF. I accidentally ran into my first bluetooh product much later, it was an addon card that came with a motherboard. Still there were no bluetooth products widely available. Sure you could scour the net and find some odd company to ship something to you but BestBuy didn't carry anything at that time. Maybe things have changed now but frankly I lost interest. I've learned that unless you must absolutely have something be wireless, don't go out of your way to purchase wireless products. The hassle just isn't worth it. There is a great lack of support in the industry and economy for bluetooth, and rightly so. Why get rid of the cable when my mouse will work 10x better with one? It would have been neat to sync my cell phone over bluetooth, but there are so few bluetooth phones out there I'd be severly limiting my choices.
Yup, just like Firewire is so well accepted, and SCSI has become a standard feature of all PCs.
Apple accepting something means nothing. USB didn't go anywhere until Windows 98 came out since Windows 95 had crappy USB support. If there's not a great need for something, it's much harder for it to be accepted. USB was quickly accepted once it became useable for this very reason. Wi-Fi the same reason.
While it's kinda cool to have a wireless mouse or keyboard, it's not really a great need. Bluetooth is relatively slow at 760 kb/sec, so it's not very practical for anything high bandwidth. Why would I recommend to Joe-User that they make sure their next computer has Bluetooth support?
AccountKiller
Wow, you're about as insightful as Enderle, I don't know what the fuck the mods who marked you as interesting were smoking, but I wish I could get some. Linking your post to the whole Apple Zealot vs. PC Muckraker thing is low, and that alone should have triggered troll alarms. Some people will never learn I guess.
The fact that Intel don't support bluetooth is about as relevant to Bluetooth's survival as if General Motors support McDonald's. It's not going to stop me putting a McDonald's soft drink in the drink holder in my gas guzzling SUV, nor is Intel's bitching about Bluetooth going to stop anyone plugging in a USB or PCMCIA bluetooth adaptor to any Intel computer.
Your understanding that Bluetooth sucked is obviously because you have no clue and have just been reading the crap that so-called pundits like this dickhead Enderle who sells his opinion to anyone who plies him with shiny things. I haven't had any problem syncing my phone to my computers using bluetooth, haven't had any problem with the range (hint: It's a PERSONAL AREA network) since it's only supposed to work while I'm right next to the computer, and haven't had any trouble syncing my phone to other phones.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that Bluetooth was dead on arrival, and because you're trolling as AC you likely won't be able to respond with a source. I know I'm feeding trolls here, but this response is so that hopefully you'll get modded into the depths of obscurity where your misinformed post belongs.
You finish off your post by saying that you don't think Bluetooth will die an immediate death. No shit sherlock, there are millions of bluetooth phones, bluetooth adaptors, and bluetooth compatible laptops out there, of course it's not going to disappear, but it will be superceded someday.
As for your comments about firewire, who gives a fuck if YOU personally don't use firewire? Practically every digital video camera uses firewire, so that's also on millions of devices and won't be going anywhere soon either.
The article is wrong: Intel hasn't abandoned Bluetooth. It bought a Bluetooth chip company three months ago and announced yesterday that it would include Bluetooth along with 802.11a, b and g in the next version of Centrino.
Thanks purely to Intel's huge advertisng campaign, Centrino is already the most popular Wi-Fi chipset on the market, so its inclusion of Bluetooth will actually give the technology a huge boost. (The exact opposite of what the article says.) What Intel actually claimed is that UWB might replace Bluetooth five to ten years from now. Just like (Intel hopes) Itanium will replace its new Opteron clone.
First the technical. Right now, Bluetooth works really well (even on Linux) and it's cheap, cheap, cheap. It's still in the running. It's really impressive making a GPRS call to connect to the Internet from my laptop with class 1 bluetooth dongle to my Ericsson t68i anywhere in the room, maybe still in the car. I don't have to move the laptop over to the window to get a good signal any longer.
Second, editorial. We had a series of articles that essentially said "Enderle's stupid and malicious". All this article says is "He's still stupid". Nobody's interested in that.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You've obviously not used anything with Bluetooth support. You're also an idiot.
Yup, just like Firewire is so well accepted
Yeah, so well-accepted, in fact, that it's standard on many good Wintel motherboards now, most all DV equipment, and most better-than-the-cheapest beige-box PCs from Dell, Sony, HP, etc. Or were you going to connect your brand-new digital camcorder to your USB2 port? Good luck with that...
and SCSI has become a standard feature of all PCs.
Until FireWire made it obsolete on the consumer level, SCSI was the standard for connecting peripherals that needed more bandwidth or speed than parallel could give, which was basically every storage device there was (except floppies).
USB didn't go anywhere until Windows 98 came out since Windows 95 had crappy USB support...USB was quickly accepted once it became useable
No, USB didn't go anywhere because there was no market for USB devices, because Joe-User on his Windoze box was still stuck in "Parallel solves all my problems" mode. It took Apple's abandonment of serial, and ADB -- and the resulting ENORMOUS market for USB peripherals due to the horrid round mouse and lack of a floppy drive -- to give USB the kick in the pants it needed. USB's usability had nothing to do with it, either. You can thank Apple for making USB more than another failed Intel experiment.
Bluetooth is relatively slow at 760 kb/sec, so it's not very practical for anything high bandwidth.
You're exactly right.
BECAUSE BLUETOOTH WASN'T DESIGNED TO BE HIGH-BANDWIDTH! It was designed to be convenient, short-range, wireless networking to replace slower, less reliable technologies like IrDA and the proprietary RF used in wireless mice/keyboards. It was designed to connect wireless fones with PDAs with computers with headsets. And it mostly succeeds at all of that. I don't expect my car to fly, so I don't know why you seem to expect Bluetooth to be an 802.11b replacement...
Why would I recommend to Joe-User that they make sure their next computer has Bluetooth support?
You don't recommend any purchases for people who have laptops, PDAs, or cell fones, do you?
Sheesh.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
therefore it can't work, be popular etc...
Most US journalists views are hampered by the lack of decent bluetooth products in the States (do I hear any of them saying irda is dead?).
Bluetook is the right technology for low powered devices that need to communicate over short distances i.e. replace wires.
For me the killer app isn't Palm or PC to Phone, it's the fact I can get in my car and my handsfree kit works with the phone still in my pocket, no cradles. Change the phone and the new one will work too.
-GigE See it all the time, guess your network just sucks =)
-Postscritp Almost all decent laser printers support it
-SCSI Not on every desktop but on many workstations and most servers plus SATA is basically serial SCSI with an IDE software interface
-DVI It's on many flat panels and many better graphics cards
-Firewire used in the iPod so pretty damn popular
-Built-in Monitors on desktops -Most manufacturers sell such a model, though anymore its more PC built into monitor
-Keyboards with power buttons -Half the keyboards out there have these today, I just hate the crappy ones that put them in the middle of the insert block =(
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'd use Wireless USB in preference to Bluetooth if they can get the crypto and security right. The key exchange is messed up, the encryption they used has real problems, and they elected not to include the most important component - strong authentication - meaning that it's possible (for example) for someone to inject false keystrokes if you use a Bluetooth keyboard. (about Bluetooth security Schneier talks about the keyboard injection attack)
What I want to hear is that David Wagner, Ross Anderson and Don Coppersmith have been called in to design the security for this new protocol. Then we might see something half decent.
Xenu loves you!
That's why USB is better from Intel's perspective.
However Intel doesn't have any chances to succeed here. Major cell-phone companies won't replace Bluetooth with anything else beside Bluetooth2 or something similar developed by them.
RS-422: OK, you win.
:)
Gigabit Ethernet: never intended for the general consumer market, never marketed at the general consumer, etc. Nothing to see here, move on.
AppleTalk: perceived as "too chatty" by network admins of the era, doesn't scale to Internet-sized applications nearly as well as TCP/IP. But it also beat the hell out of anything available at the time for ease of use, as usual.
PostScript: last I checked, laser printers were still using it. But an argument could be made along the same lines as that for Gigabit Ethernet.
SCSI: again, you win.
DVI: Never embraced by Apple, so what's this doing on the list?
FireWire: I wouldn't call its presence "every single digital camcorder" a "failure for the general consumer market." If you want to digitise home movies, you use FireWire, period.
NuBus: one more for you, but primarily because Wintel hardware of the same era couldn't handle 32-bit expansion buses.
Passive cooling: a failure only because it's damned near impossible on x86 hardware at a reasonable (read: e-Machines or Dell) price point.
Built-in monitors on desktops: OK, you half-win. Initially done because it was economical and easier to support, now done because "market research" says that typical consumers don't bother upgrading their monitors, ever. Which is why you have people using a 1993 VGA display with a Pentium 4-based box and wondering why they can't surf without side-scrolling.
Single-button mice: mice? Gee, who put THOSE on the modern PC? Certainly not the company that brought to market the GUI-as-we-know-it. (Arguments about Xerox PARC are well-rehearsed. Don't start with me.)
Foot-pedal mice: this would have failed no matter WHO was behind it.
Portrait displays: see Gigabit Ethernet.
Keyboards with power buttons: maybe if AT power supplies had ever supported soft power...but I hardly see this as being on the same level as the first seven or eight items on your list.
Newton died because Steve killed it.
Palm beat the hell out of its remains because all the Newton developers went there when they lost their jobs.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Dang, dude. Calm down before you give yourself a coronary.
I'm a systems engineer for a corporation with about 12,000 Windows desktops and hundreds of Windows servers (we also use Solaris and IBM mainframe, but those aren't really relevant to this discussion).
The other guy is right - SCSI has always been a niche product for PC desktops. It's useful on servers, but the last PC workstation that we bought with SCSI was a dual-PPro 200 model, which should give you some idea of its age.
I had SCSI on my home system up until a few years ago, but only because I'd had bad experiences with IDE CD burners.
SCSI is pretty cool, but the vast majority of desktop users don't need the capabilities it provides. It was handier on the Mac, since external storage was so much more common on them (at least in my experience).
For desktop PC users, IDE (or SATA now, I guess) is plenty fast enough for hard drives and CD/DVD burners, and it's a LOT cheaper. USB fills the need for external devices, except for niche users who need high speed external hard drives or AV-capture capability.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
For once? ;)
You have never experienced the North American Cellphone market, have you?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
"IBM and NEC both just dropped support for Bluetooth in their ASIC core selection"
In the end, It's not NEC nor IBM, nor Dell nor Gateway that decide what is the end of the IEEE standard. It's the consumers. IBM and NEC are driven only by profit. If they chose to drop support, it's only because they weren't seeing a return on investment, and let's face it... Bluetooth has had a very slow but steady increase in sales.
If the standard truly has staying power, then consumers will continue to purchase Bluetooth devices. When I purchased my new Toshiba laptop just 3 months ago, the major selling points were as follows: Firewire (for the ipod), USB2 (for the scanner), 17 inch screen (because I'm a whore for big screens) and bluetooth. (Because the concept tickles my fancy, and should Sprint come out with an uber cool Bluetooth phone, I'll get one.)
Toshiba saw the ROI for including bluetooth because I was yet another consumer to purchase one. If you love bluetooth, go buy a bluetooth device, or something with the bluetooth core.
Consumers define the products, not the vendors. They just tag along to take our money.
Enderle is a fool and/or is a bought-and-paid-for shill of MS. See in particular his rants equating Linux users to terrorists, and his past statements that his opinions are for sale. There isn't anything this guy can see that lots of others couldn't - so, even if Enderle manages to say something true (a very rare occurence, I guarantee you) you should find someone else to link to.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
So, in sum, reports of Bluetooth's all-but-death have been greatly exaggerated?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.