MacBooks Experiencing Bluetooth Problems

flowolf writes in with news that Apple seems to be having difficulty getting to grips with a Bluetooth problem on MacBooks. Bluetooth goes unavailable intermittently from what users are assuming is a hardware problem, and while it's out the machines won't stay in sleep mode. Complaints started last spring on the Apple forum, which is still quite active. Many people have had to send their MacBooks for repair more than once without a satisfactory resolution.

Comments

Leaky microwaves and sloppy electronics

[guruevi]

A lot of interference on both Bluetooth and WiFi can be traced back to microwaves, cheap electronics and so forth. Why I say that? Simple: my neighbour starts cooking and I get interference on WiFi, I start cooking and I get no WiFi, I replace microwave with new model and WiFi is strong as ever. Everything that has something to do with waves or radiography these days is in the 2,4GHz band. It used to be the 433MHz band that wasn't useable, now it's the 2,4GHz band.

Especially cheap/sloppy electronics and landline wireless phones. Manufacturers think they can use the whole spectrum at full blast to just send an 8-bit code in serial to the receiver (those cheap 'radio' remote controls). If you look at the circuitry basically it's an excited crystal that is extremely amped up (which adds lots of sideband noise if you put it on a scope), somewhat filtered with a small capacitor and what we used to call either a resistor or coil is now just a little squiggle on the printboard. And for the wireless phones, I have seen those things eat up literally 6 WiFi channels at the same time every time it is used.

And yes, Bluetooth, WiFi and the likes are all on 2,4GHz and as long as the FCC keeps their thumb on and only gives us very little of the air (or ether if you're really old) to use. For the rest of the air you have to pay big licensing costs.