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Severe limitations on Blue Tooth usage
The computer industry is driven by greed rather than by a conscience of serving consumers the best quality products. Shortcomings are reflected in computer design, Blue Tooth ease of use, and even in the release of new iPhones. The old iPhones are being abandoned and users are experiencing delays, slow systems, snags and bugs because that’s what Apple wants to push you to spend more money
By Ray Hanania
Blue Tooth sure sounds like a great idea but the truth is it is limited by the narrow technology designed by the Apple and Computer system tech developers.
Not being normal people, most tech developers have no idea why a normal person might want to use a blue tooth headset and a blue tooth speaker to listen to music playing off of a MacBook Pro.
In other words, I want to broadcast music from my laptop using Blue Tooth to two devices, my Blue Tooth headset (which costs me over $300) and my Blue Tooth speaker (which cost me over $200), and I can’t.
You would think that the Blue Tooth signal is like a radio band and can be picked up by many devices, but it’s not. You can only “pair” — the limiting technology term developed by the tech developers meaning to “connect” — Blue Tooth with one device. But “connect” would be a better option than “pairing.”
Pairing is limiting. Connecting is open.
For example, maybe you are a drummer playing music from your laptop so an audience can hear you play and the drums being played at the same time. But, as the drummer, you want to connect a blue tooth headset to the computer so you can concentrate on the music.
With Blue Tooth, you can’t do that.
And, even in a car when listening to Blue Tooth music, if a phone call comes in, the phone cuts off the Blue Tooth pairing to take over. Maybe you want the music in the background.
These are things normal people do.
But at Apple and other computer firms, what normal people want or need is not what they care about. All they care about is making money. Computer technology, especially by Apple, is driven by pure greed. And that greed trumps quality.
How many times have you purchased a new technology only to discover that it is inefficient or the quality of the product not quite up to what was promised. It’s a common problem with technology. The companies spend millions to hype up the promotion of a new product to drive up sale while ignoring many obvious flaws and bugs that are never addressed. Although “bugs” technically are issues that come up with use from different circumstances of use, flaws are clearly failed services that reflect what a new technology should be doing but is not.
The bLue Tooth limitations go beyond the narrow minded lack of vision of the tech developers who should have created an option to allow three or more headsets to listen to one Blue Tooth music broadcast. But headsets driven by Blue Tooth are terrible because you have no control over them, except to turn them on or off. There is no way for you to direct the headset to search for a Blue Tooth sound source and then pair up — with authorization, of course.
I dislike Blue Tooth. It’s not controllable. It’s intrusive in a broad way and does what it wants, not what the user wants. But, that’s the mantra of the corrupt computer industry today, doing what they want rather than giving consumers what they want. The computer companies, especially Apple, want to control your lives because when they can control your life, they can also have a huge influence over your spending habits and in effect control your spending, for themselves.
It’s all about money, not quality.
The new iPhones have caused a serious problem for iPhones around the world. Apple has made a clear decision to focus their attentions on providing service to their new, far more expensive iPhone models, iPhone 8 and iPhone X.
Although why do you release two iPhones, one less superior and one more superior, if it wasn’t only about money and greed? It’s really pathetic and disrespectful to the consumers.
Since the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, users of earlier models of iPhones including the much vaunted and promoted iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, for example, and not to mention even earlier versions of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4, all of these earlier models are now experiencing huge delays in connection, response time.
The earlier models pre-iPhone 8 are being abandoned like children abandoned by their parents.
And that’s ironic, considering Apple founder Steve Jobs was abandoned by his father and mother. His life improved only because he was adopted by parents with a conscience and a sense of responsibility to others — something Steve’s biological parents clearly lacked.
And that is reflected in the attitude of the Apple company and its executives. They are abandoning their children in exchange for profit and greed.
That’s disgusting.
Don’t let anyone pretend that Apple has a social conscience. It doesn’t. They don’t care about us orphaned Apple consumers. They intentionally are screwing with your older phones in order to test your patience, frustrate you and force you to go out and give them more money to purchase their over-priced phones that in two years will be worthless, too, after they replace them with new products.
The orphan model is the Apple Corporate mantra. And it infects everything produced from iPhones to Blue Tooth technology.
They could make it better. But, that might cost them more, so they won’t.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist, author and former Chicago City Hall reporter. Email him at [email protected].)
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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iPhone 8 and X both have Bluetooth 5, which allows people to connect to two devices at once