Apple Planning to Add Bluetooth Support for AirPlay, and Expand iOS Accessory Capabilities

[deconstruct60]

Airplay is far higher quality than AD2P, which is very lossy.

That is because in part bluetooth is slower than WiFi. It is also the case that Airplay is more than just streaming audio content. Airplay also transfers metadata about the stream and allows volume remote control. Airplay is also used to stream video. http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay.html . So this is much more than what AD2P does.

However, in the subset mode of just pushing audio to a BT device they basically do the same thing. That's why they are grouped together at the control interface. If you want to run a subset of Airplay you still see it listed in the Airplay control. It is the logical place to group the presentation of the two functions.


There are two major parts to Bluetooth 4.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_v4.0). One is the low energy mode. The other is a High Speed mode. BT "High Speed" is basically a point-to-point ad hoc WiFi connection (the normal BT channels used to negoiate the ad hoc network). Similar speeds as WiFi so not particularly surprising that a WiFi target codec would now work on BT 4.0. A completely separate mode is the Low Energy mode( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy). In that mode, bandwidth is chopped down to below current BT data rates. That would not be good mode to stream high quality audio (much less video ) in: 0.26 Mb/s .

Also, if you have more than one Wifi point, you can often lose connection while the devices switch.

BT 4.0 isn't going to fix that. It is not a good "roaming" protocol. Unless the "player" and the "streamer" devices are both moving together at some point before WiFi distance limits the BT connection will drop out.

This may also mean a much lower power consumption for airplay.

Doubtful. In BT 4.0 High Speed mode it should be about the same as WiFi. In Low Speed mode it is doubtful that you are streaming anything. The Low Speed mode is a good mode when there is no streaming activity but the two device still need to maintain "are you still there?" connection.
Or a browse metadata connection. There may be some advanced power management where turn the WiFi off when not streaming and back on when engaged, but that would be the extent of lower power usage. When streaming was engaged it would likely go up; not down.

It's possible that you could have portable Airplay speakers and Airplay headphones with far higher quality and reliability than A2DP.

Only with bigger batteries for the increase in radio power.

 

[dethmaShine]

No it cant. Try sending a pic or song over bluetooth with an iPhone. Good luck with that

A song? Seriously? Just buy your own music.

All Apple should do is: send an iTunes link over bluetooth for the person to listen to the sample. In case of 3G, Apple should just send a 30second sample using bluetooth wirelessly.

But I agree, photo sharing should be made simpler after all.

 

[MadDog31]

While it doesn't use bluetooth, I can send pics using Bump. You will never be able to share songs...

I use an app called Song2Email that is a roundabout way of sharing music, albeit with some message size limitations. Wouldn't effect most music though.

And no, I'm not a developer of the app, I just saw it mentioned somewhere and decided to try it. It's worked like a charm thus far.

 

[Ballis]

I dunno what all this is about, but when I'm in my car and hit the airplay icon, my iPhone streams to my stereo over blutooth just fine right now. Don't really understand whats new here. Am i missing something?

 

[Gomff]

An analog controller for the iPad akin to an Xbox 360 or PS3 would make a huge number of games much more playable. Touchscreen interfaces are OK for some genres but FPS, driving games, platform games and probably many others besides would benefit from decent gamepad support.

 

[cshearer]

AirPlay enabled car stereo head units? Also known as my dream come true.

 

[gramirez2012]

Image

Don't need luck.

What app is that?

 

[Piggie]

An analog controller for the iPad akin to an Xbox 360 or PS3 would make a huge number of games much more playable. Touchscreen interfaces are OK for some genres but FPS, driving games, platform games and probably many others besides would benefit from decent gamepad support.

I've been calling for this since the iPad first launched.

An "Optional" apple bluetooth games controller than a dev can choose to support if they feel it lends itself to the game in question.

They can still offer on screen controls as normal, but (like with VERY old PC games) support a joystick if one is available.

It's amazing, how more optimistic I feel about Apple now that Steve is gone.
As great as he was, as much as he benefited the company in many ways, I also feel he held other parts of Apple back from evolving into better things.

Hopefully now this constraint has gone, we can look forward to a more interesting and open future. Not locked down to what just one person though it should be like.

 

[kiljoy616]

The more the better for all of us.

 

[MacFan23]

I've been calling for this since the iPad first launched.

It's amazing, how more optimistic I feel about Apple now that Steve is gone.
As great as he was, as much as he benefited the company in many ways, I also feel he held other parts of Apple back from evolving into better things.

Hopefully now this constraint has gone, we can look forward to a more interesting and open future. Not locked down to what just one person though it should be like.

He only died 2 months ago, I'm sure he was aware of this development.

 

[Peace]

I think Apple is thinking along the lines of low-latency via Bluetooth more than they are thinking of streaming via bluetooth. That's just icing on the cake. So to speak.

This implies games and apps on the Apple TV.

 

[wjanoch]

BT easy setup & fast control

Apple TV setup is pretty good, but it could be even better if you turn it on, launch a setup App on your Mac or iPhone and just push the WiFi, Home Sharing, Netflix, and other settings to it in ONE step.

And Apple's Remote App is fast for a WiFi remote, but BT should acquire a connection faster, and without any other device (WiFi hotspot). It's important when you have to "unlock your remote" before pressing pause to answer the phone.

if you don't have a WiFi network available, you wouldn't have to setup/buy one just to use remote control between your iPhone & Apple TV. This is especially important when you take them to someone else's office or home. They may not want to give you WiFi passwords, especially if company policy forbids it.

And since BT 4.0 high speed is based on WiFi, it's an official merging of both worlds. It'll setup WiFi in an adhoc mode (maybe use existing WiFi if both are already setup?) for fast secure communication between devices without the need for an existing WiFi network (WiFi hotspots).

It does make me wonder if it can support WiFi to the internet at the same time as BT-WiFi to other devices. Would streaming audio keep playing when you connect a photo slideshow to an AppleTV that you haven't setup for WiFi? Would the iPhone switch that audio stream to 3G and start using up cell data?

 

[bushido]

A song? Seriously? Just buy your own music.

All Apple should do is: send an iTunes link over bluetooth for the person to listen to the sample. In case of 3G, Apple should just send a 30second sample using bluetooth wirelessly.

But I agree, photo sharing should be made simpler after all.

believe it or not, its legal to share songs u own with friends as long as u dont get paid for it in some parts of the world + every damn phone can do it besides the iPhone. only thing thats always bugged me about my iphone

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While it doesn't use bluetooth, I can send pics using Bump. You will never be able to share songs...

3rd party apps arent a solution for everyone

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

"There's an app for that."
Maybe you should do some research first before you try (read: fail) to troll...

whos trolling? its always been a known fact that iphones cant do real file sharing over bluetooth
even apple said its just "easier to send photos per mail" ... my ass. not everyone has internet on their phones yet but they do have bluetooth

Image

Don't need luck.

that doesnt really work for everything tho, apple doesnt grand access to all needed parts of the system as far as i know

 

[Nosadge]

Tired of wires and cables

Does this mean we can finally see some decent wireless headphone options available? I hate how my headphone wires are always catching on things and pulling the headphones out of my ears.

 

[dethmaShine]

believe it or not, its legal to share songs u own with friends as long as u dont get paid for it in some parts of the world + every damn phone can do it besides the iPhone. only thing thats always bugged me about my iphone

How does windows phone 7 do it?

 

[MacAddict1978]

A 2003 nokia isn't a file??

But really, yes it can...

"There's an app for that."
Maybe you should do some research first before you try (read: fail) to troll...[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't call the op a troll, but I'd call you one and other things. Beyond you're snarky grammar correction to his post, you have to be a doosh bag and can't just say, "well, there are apps the give you file transfer over BT." Considering the topic is about BT on IOS devices, I think his comment was somewhat relevant rather than randomly trolling.

Way to be a jerk. Apps still don't restore the function of a 2003 Nokia phone. The iPhone has LOTS of these little annoyances. (My 2003 Nokia phone did MMS better too)

Now here's a constructive argument: Yeah, the iPhone really needs a boost to it's bluetooth capabilities. However, with wi-fi and mobile web, it's not a major issue. By the time you set up blue tooth to transfer a file between two mobile devices, or transfer a file to your computer, you might as well have just emailed it or used MMS.

Any devices which connect over airplay must first connect to wifi.

This is something that I think Apple would be better off spending time on. If I am right in front of my Apple TV with my iPhone, and I want to stream an HD video to my TV, it has to beam up to my router, and then back down to the Apple TV... which then starts to buffer the stream. Unless your have a professional grade router at home (and few people do), it can be several minutes before that video plays because HD takes up so much more bandwith.

Now, if my IOS device could just directly steam to the wi-fi on the Apple TV, it would be almost instant, or at least MUCH faster and without the lag.

I don't have an iPad 2, so I haven't explored beaming the iPad to my screen via Apple TV, but does anyone know if this works in the same fashion? Which, the iPad isn't beaming HD for the most part when using putting an app on the TV, but if it does work the same way I can imagine it would be more fluid and work better.

This can obviously be done, since the mac can do it.

 

[Peace]

I could be wrong but I don't think Airplay goes through the router. It uses ad-hoc along the sub-net to go from device to device. Peer to Peer. Kinda sorta.

 

[logicpro7]

Any chance of Bluetooth 4 being able to stream video from the iPhone in the future?

 

[BanterClaus]

This is awesome. Ive had to miss out on all of the airplay features on my devices as my home network is too secure to allow stuff like that. With this I will finally be able to benefit!

 

[BB1970]

For Vehicles?

Perhaps the expanded protocol is for connecting to bluetooth enabled vehicles or with a dongle that can be connected to the AUX port and transmitted?

 

[lfc]

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[
Snip...

Considering that file sharing has nothing to do with the article, yes I would call it pointless off-topic trolling especially when making that comment in comparison to another phone. If he didn't want to troll, why not just say "Now all it needs is file sharing via Bluetooth".

P.S. Grammar correction? I never wanted to correct, just made a little half-a-joke.

I may of sounded a little rude, but it's getting really damn annoying trying to come to a site to read up on some discussion and then always having to go through reading posts like that. Maybe I just need to get better at ignoring them... Anyway, I'm sure you can understand where I'm coming from.

 

[j.he3903]

It's actually Shenzhen.

 

[serveitup911]

Apple should build in APT-X lossless audio compression protocol support. Better range than A2DP and much better sound quality. My Creative ZiiSound D5 uses this with a small dongle for Apple's 30 pin connector. They also make a usb transmitter dongle for computers.

 

[tylerk36]

If Apple had restrictions on this it was for a really good reason. Now we can see some really cool stuff to come out. Possibly a Blue Tooth Apple TV and Television.

 

[FourCandles]

...
"MFI" is Apple's Made for iPod / iPhone / iPad certification program for accessory manufacturers.
...

A slightly unfortunate choice of name for the UK market, at least if they're trying to promote quality.