[a13n]

is there evidence it’s for vendor lock in purposes? airpods have a pretty stellar connection for bluetooth, wouldn’t be surprised if there were performance reasons for them going off spec

[Aurornis]

I doubt it’s for any reason at all. The obvious explanation is that they just developed and tested these extra firmware features against Apple devices because that was the product decision. Since nobody was tasked with targeting Android they might not have even noticed that it wasn’t perfectly spec-compliant if those states were never encountered, nor expected to be encountered.

[fingerlocks]

No there isn’t. I’ve said this a million times before, but usually just downvoted: this is about reducing support costs, not increasing revenue from lock-in. This is not a theory, I’ve sat in meetings at Cupertino and been told first hand.

Support is very expensive. Say what you want about Apple, but they provide absolutely stellar support, especially with the stupidly inexpensive Apple Care insurance. This is only cost effective if they can make reasonable predictions about how their devices will behave in any given scenario. Interfacing Apple hardware with non-certified (MFi, BLE, etc) third party hardware has a non-trivial risk of unpredictability high support costs, either from excessive Apple Care claims, customer support communications, or just overloading the Genius Bar.

Reducing support cost could easily explain the motivation of the entire walled garden if they are sufficiently high.

[bubblethink]

That's tautological. Everything that is not supported is so because supporting it has a cost. The question is what is the cost? It seems quite obvious that the marginal revenue from airpods would be overshadowed by the revenue of getting a user in the ecosystem.

[pbhjpbhj]

They couldn't just write (and make people aware at point of sale, ofc) 'no support for using devices with non-Apple Computers products' into Apple Care. They had to purposely break compatibility?

[gf000]

if (name == 'APPLE') will surely improve performance.

[indentit]

Specifications are there for a reason... Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?

[helsinkiandrew]

You can still connect AirPods to an android device using Bluetooth, you just don’t get the seamless connection or support for Spatial Audio that use the extended protocols

[Aurornis]

> Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?

Because they needed a way to get audio to the AirPods wirelessly and to work with their devices? That’s a pretty good reason to use Bluetooth.

I doubt they got together and tried to scheme a way to break Bluetooth in this one tiny little way for vendor lock in. You can use the basic AirPod features with other Bluetooth devices. It’s just these extended features that were never developed for other platforms.

HN comments lean heavily conspiratorial but I think the obvious explanation is that the devs built and tested it against iPhone and Mac targets and optimized for that. This minor discrepancy wasn’t worked around because it isn’t triggered on Apple platforms and it’s not a target for them.

[fouc]

Perhaps Apple correctly implemented the specification here

[binkHN]

This is Microsoft's playbook from many years ago: embrace, extend, extinguish.

[wolpoli]

Apple is a promoter member of the Bluetooth standard organization for a while now, so it could submit that as an enhancement.

[fouc]

Assuming they even went off spec at all.

[potatoproduct]

Performance reasons LOL. Apple fans love plausible deniability.

[okayjustonemore]

And haters love a conspiracy.

Truth is, no one has the full facts so any reasons as to why this was made the way it was is pure speculation. Only a fool would move to condemn or endorse what is not yet fully understood.