well, you could always wrap your devices in tinfoil. It works, you know.
seriously but: no, it is not harmful.
seriously but: no, it is not harmful.
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is it not harmful to connect and endlessly use Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse with a Mac Mini ?
- Thread starter marcusalwayswins
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I’m wondering if the OP just has a condition limiting their ability to comprehend. Maybe if we just all say - It’s won’t be a problem and leave it at that, he/she will get the message and this thread will disappear like the rest of them.
OP - please, I beg of you, close this thread and move on. I fear for your mental health if you continue.
OP - please, I beg of you, close this thread and move on. I fear for your mental health if you continue.
Every Mac for 20 years has used Bluetooth for everything. why would this be any issue whatsoever? How else would one even connect anymore and why? Is this a tinfoil hat paranoia thing? lol. Vision Pro uses bluetooth on your face
Ok Guys ! I hear you guys. Have connected my Keyboard and Mouse over Bluetooth now to the Mac Mini 🤟
No, it is not harmful to connect and endlessly use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with a Mac Mini. Bluetooth devices are designed for regular and prolonged use without causing harm to the device.
Legend has it that if you connect enough Bluetooth peripherals to a Mac Mini in a dark room with a mirror nearby, eventually the ghost of Jony Ives appears in the mirror and smolders at you disapprovingly, while mouthing out something about "ah loo min yum." (this is especially impressive as, last I checked, he was alive and perfectly healthy 👻)
serious answer: It's fine. All Macs, as well as all modern computers really, are designed to have Bluetooth on all the time.
That is a misnomer. Just like killing all your apps all the time. 99.9% of the time, it does nothing to improve performance.
Bluetooth has some draw, but for it to just be "ON" is pretty minimal.
When actually in use, it does draw some, but compared to the screen, the speakers, apps, etc, it is tiny.
The reason that some are concerned about performance with bluetooth on is battery performance.
Generally speaking the impact to phones the radios have in order of power draw from highest to lowest is going to be:
#1 by far, Cellular. -- Transmission Range around 17000 meters
#2 is Wifi -- Transmission Range around 15-45 meters (5Ghz shorter than 2.4)
#3 Bluetooth -- Transmission Range 10 meters.
This has to transmit multiple KM, so the broadcast strength is generally high. Depending on which carrier you will have it's frequency will be somewhere from 450Mhz to 3.8Ghz (LTE), as compared to Wifi, 2.4Ghz - 6Ghz, or bluetooth @ 2.4Ghz, which means that on average, the frequency and bandwidth are the drivers of the power needs, and with Cellular now having comparable speeds to Wifi, we can say that generally, they are broadcasting on similar frequencies with similar bandwidth. What that means is that the big variable between Cell and Wifi is going to be power to the radio.
Bluetooth on the other hand, while still similar frequencies, is a small fraction of the bandwidth, and as such, needs even less power to effectively transmit at the same distance. compound that with the range requirements it should use something like 2-3 orders of magnitude less power than wifi.
All that said, turning off your bluetooth saves you almost nothing... except in the case of giving blanket permission to all those apps that want to run in the background, but use bluetooth in the background. IF you have a bunch of apps using bluetooth to wake them up, scan devices, and process info, that can drain the battery much faster, but that is not a fault in the hardware, it's that everyone who gives you a cheap or free app wants to farm as much info from you and uses bluetooth as a gateway to do so.
So short answer is that having bluetooth on doesn't harm your phone or your computer in any way physically, except for a rather small impact to battery usage when used normally. Since your Mac-mini is plugged in this is a non issue.
Long answer, keeping in mind what I said,
Bluetooth in your phone/computer probably uses at most 100 milliamps @ 3.3v (or so) , when it is on and full broadcast , while a brand new 15 pro max A17 Soc will pull about 8W, or roughly 2500 milliamps @ 3.3v.
So assuming that you are using bluetooth to its max at the same time you are using the processor to the max, turning off bluetooth saves you about 4% compared to the phone processor if that were the only two things drawing power. In a computer, the bluetooth takes the same power, but an intel processor will be 10 times the power draw, while the M1 Mac mini base is 10W, so more comparable to the phone.
That is back of napkin math not accounting for all the other components, including the display which probably has a power draw similar to the whole processor. Adding those in, the impact of bluetooth gets even smaller.
So the "Logic" of the "harm" of bluetooth on mobile devices isn't really that logical.
I've had Bluetooth keyboard mice (and track pads and headsets and air pods and ... lots of other stuff) to my Macs since 2004. That means at least five desktops (including a mini), seven or eight MacBooks of all flavors (from Air to Pro to ...) and yes, even iPhones. (No trackpads on the iPhone, though.) Everything in the household runs this way - mine, work machines, wife's, two kids' when they were in college. Technical stuff aside, I'm pretty sure this is safe.
Bluetooth was invented by Jaap Hartsen of Sweden, and first used in an Ericsson phone. It was named after Harald ”Bluetooth” Gormsson, 10th century king of Norway & Sweden. It had nothing to do with Microsoft.
I would worry more if you had cell phone attached to your head. Lee Atwater, who always had a cell phone to his ear died from brain cancer. Maybe a warning maybe not.
One word to sum it all up: Paranoid.
Use it normally and replace it when it breaks. Simple.
The regulations aren’t there for show, you know.
Use it normally and replace it when it breaks. Simple.
The regulations aren’t there for show, you know.
Probably referring to something like BT 2.0 or earlier version when the chip efficiency was comparatively bad and could really drain battery quickly if being turned on all the time. Same for earlier wifi chips. Nowadays they are so efficient and BT LE‘s introduction makes such worry completely obsolete. Heck, BT LE is one of the cornerstones of IoT for those devices with far smaller battery and smaller in size.
Way too expensive to buy it again... i have the 512 GB SSD with 16 GB RAM and am not in the U.S these things cost a bombshell in this part of the world.
Want to use it for a long long time to come..I am eyeing atleast 5 Years.
I doubt it actually talks via usb if you connect them directly, someone can correct me if I'm wrong?
But this is a non issue, we had an iMac for years and it was only ever connected using the apple bluetooth mice and keyboard
Totally non-issue, I would hope this isn't a troll.
We had an iMac and for years it was only ever used via Apple bluetooth mice and keyboard.
We had an iMac and for years it was only ever used via Apple bluetooth mice and keyboard.
5 years isn't a long time. I have bluetooth devices that are 17 years old and still working. Just use your stuff.
I think you're right, don't know why my brain thought it was communicating via the lightning cable.
There's definitely a lot of "you should really stop and think before you post" going on with these forums lately.
Wrong, Bluetooth is named after King Bluetooth of Denmark by Ericsson who originated B/T. The symbol for B/T is a combination of Nordic symbols. Please get it right? 🤷♂️
Did you really not see that it was a joke?
Anyway, not to worry, you're not the first one not to recognise humour.
Link
Eventually the hardware will wear out and fail.... but I have never had a bluetooth or WiFi emitter/receiver fail... not within the time the hardware was in active use (let's say 5 to maybe a maximum of 15 years)
Look after it and Im sure you will have no worries... this means place it in a position where there is no excessive heat (heater or in the sunlight) or cold (and extreme fluctuations in temp), dust or vibration.
Look after it and Im sure you will have no worries... this means place it in a position where there is no excessive heat (heater or in the sunlight) or cold (and extreme fluctuations in temp), dust or vibration.
I think it's fine for people to ask questions... there's never a silly question. We are not obliged to read or respond to anything on here... and if things are allowed in the correct places within the forums... we can find or avoid it etc.
Looks like I’ll need to go edit the Wikipedia entry for Bluetooth to set the record straight. I’ll link to my original posting as the source.Factually incorrect info is the issue not the topic. Please get it right?
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Apple computers CAN last 5+ years. Some people still rock Mac Pro 2013 even today. Outdated software yes, but machine still works.
It is totally unnecessary to worry about these kind of minuscule issue when cleaning dust, keeping components cool and dry has more impacts on your Mac. I understand you want to take good care about it. But frying Bluetooth chip is not one of them. On another note, let’s say if your Mac’s Bluetooth chip is so bad that it can be fried quickly, not using it ain‘t gonna prolong the inevitable that much either, since the chip would still subject to current flowing inside the machine somewhat even if you turn it off in macOS.