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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.
I recently moved, and found some troubling differences in Bluetooth performance. At the old place, my bluetooth keyboard and mouse worked quite solidly: smooth responsive mouse motion and I could type full speed without problems. The range was quite good with no deterioration at 5ft. At the new place, the mouse often jitters or sloshes as I move it, and if I type quickly, once in a while it will receive the keystrokes in a different order. (At first I felt it was just an occasional transpose mistake on my part, but every once in a while, a whole word will be received *mostly* backwards.) There's a noticeable improvement/degradation effect if I simply move a Coke can around on my desk, even if I keep the mouse within about 2ft of the Mac. The mouse is so bad I switched to an older radio-based wireless mouse instead.
I'm guessing from other cases mentioned on the web that Bluetooth gets stuck trying to resend packets if there's interference killing some packets. I imagine this sort of jitter and resend loop can be a big problem if it happens in a sleep mode.
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Complaints started last spring on the Apple forum, which is still quite active.
Oh don't worry, we're working on erasing those complaints.
- Apple's Support Team
The real problem is the total lack of communication from anyone on Apple's side to these kinds of problems. Bluetooth problems have been an ongoing issue since I started using Tiger (10.4.4), with everything from the aforementioned "Bluetooth unavailable", to problems with using DUN via Bluetooth (dial up too often via DUN and it just mysteriously dies), to issues where Bluetooth PAN simply disables itself. Now after a good 2 years this kind of stuff gets really tiring but no one at Apple says a word which adds an extra layer of frustration to the whole process. Are they even aware of the problems from their aluminium tower?
Now compare that with Microsoft who also had Bluetooth problems with their phones, and you can actually get some kind of interactivity with the developers. Your end users might end up being a bit nasty to you on the forum, but it's far less than the ill-feelings your brand generates if you just clam up.
I haven't been terribly impressed with bluetooth. I bought a (rather expensive) bluetooth mouse for my Acer laptop, and I keep experiencing random disconnects in Windows with it. Not in Kubuntu, though. The mouse works perfectly in Linux.
And evidently the XP Bluetooth stack is some third party thing you can uninstall and reinstall, because I had to reinstall it to even get it to do anything.
And it seems that most phones have very few bluetooth features beyond headsets. Like you can't upload and download photos without some crappy phone tools software if you have a Motorola.
Has anyone found bluetooth to be reliable for them? Any success stories?
The funny thing is that Apple support here in Stockholm said to here that "there is nothing wrong with it".... Oh well...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Consumer Reports' surveys consistently give Apple's support the highest rating of any computer company. Enterprise-level support might be a different story, but calling their consumer-level support "mediocre at best" is not an opinion that is supported statistically. What it may mean, of course, is that the entire industry's support is so awful that Apple only looks good in comparison. I'm just sayin'.
I'm just sayin'.
I am starting to get fed up with OSX - I got a brand new replacement MacBook Pro after going through three weeks of unsuccessful repairs and damage during repair. I continously get dropped Aiport connections along with a ton of errors in system log about ath_intr_proc or something like that. Apple says they are aware of this problem - yeah ok, it's 3 months already. Where is the fix?
Next, every update kills some applications - 3rd time now, iWeb 2.0.2 update killed the whole iLife set of apps - they no longer start due to missing framework or something. This is a long known bug with Apple's linker dyld which zeroes shared libraries while pre-linking. No word from Apple on when/if it will be fixed - so people have to keep their fingers crossed everytime they do an update. Apple's response for the time being is to replace those zeroed files from install DVD. _ALL_ of my previously reported bugs (some 2 years old now) have had no updates from Apple yet.
Contrast this with MSFT - The network stall issue is already being worked upon and they handled the whole thing in a good way - there was even Developer interaction. Similarly with slow file copy I was able to talk to their support team and Engineers - a fix is already in place. Recently I tried installling Blackberry software which failed - Vista automatically applied right compatibility settings and restarted the install - it went on successfully. Vista is again very nice with Driver support attempts - Even with 64-bit edition, most of my MacBook Pro hardware gets drivers from Windows update - WHQL certified Silicon Image drivers for my expresscard SATA work flawlessly on Vista - suspend/resume/yanking-the-card all works fine. With Apple I have to download them from obscure Silicon Image website, they are not certified or tested, they crash regularly and even eat my iPod disk for no reason and I have nowhere to go to complain.
Microsoft is a company built to handle the problems that come with widespread success - Apple is clearly not and they need to recruit to catch up.
Anecdotally, I have a MacBook and the Bluetooth has always worked fine, but I realize that anecdotal evidence isn't worth much.
For the very same reason, I'm not sure if this is a story if the only evidence to support it is a thread or threads on Apple's discussion pages. You hear this all the time: "Hundreds of people are posting to the forums about this problem, but [whatever company, Apple in this example] refused to acknowledge that it's a major problem!" Well, here's the thing, if the company sells millions of computers and a hundred people are having a problem... in fact, let's say that the posters on the forum represent only a small percentage of people that are having the problem, so, it's a few thousand units that have the problem, it's still statistically small, even if it looks like a major issue on the forum and feels like a major issue if it happens to you.
It's not that it's not important or that Apple shouldn't fix it, it's just that it's not a news story, IMO.
Posting this to Slashdot with no other links about the story seems like somebody's just looking for an excuse to write a negative Apple story, but maybe that's just my tinfoil hat talking.
I'm just sayin'.
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.
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