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Comment by littlecranky67 | Hacker News Reader

Bluetooth(-devices) work okay as long there is only one main host (Laptop, Smartphone) and multiple accessoires involved ONLY for use on that host. As soon as you have several main hosts in constant use (Car, Laptop, Phone) and use the accessoires regularly on different main hosts, it becomes a nightmare. Auto (dis-)connects happening on power on/off, some devices not relinquishing their connection etc. In these configurations I've never seen it work properly, and most often it is more a source of anger than happiness.

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Anecdata happened 30mins after typing that answer: I disabled BT on my Macbook while I was using a Bose Soundlink Micro BT speaker which sits at the other end of the room (because I wanted to use the built-in speaker). Now after disabling my BT on the laptop, the Bose Speaker went into nagging mode, playing "Ready to connect" in 30s intervals. Had to get my ass of the chair and manually turn it off.

I mean, what is the logic behind this. Why would I go into nagging mode and tell my user every 30s that "I am ready to connect" just because the BT device disconnected? How about you do nothing, wait 5mins, and if no other device connects you go to standby?

I think it's otherwise confusing for users to know what state the device is in. Like for example take any bluetooth device that has a blinking blue light on it. What does it mean? There's probably a cultural understanding that it means it's waiting for a connection but then again you'll find many other bluetooth devices doing it other ways.

It becomes even funnier with a dual-boot setup. My headphones think they are connected with my laptop, but either the pairing was with Linux or Windows, in which case I need to disconnect and connect again.

While I haven't personally tried it (and have since given up on BT audio in my setup), there seems to be a way to extract the pairing key from Windows and have the Linux Bluetooth stack use it (see e.g. [0]), effectively making the Windows and Linux host appear identical to the paired device.

[0]: https://brokkr.net/2015/09/26/bluetooth-dual-booting-sharing...

I can attest that this works. I did this for my headphones and keyboard/mouse until I plugged the keyboard into my work mac with the USB cable to charge. I didn’t know that Apple sees this and creates the connection via Bluetooth (Yes used a spare Magic Keyboard). I had no desire to to the whole setup again and now have a cable keyboard and a KVM setup.

Because of exactly those edge cases I'm reluctant to use wireless BT headphones. I still only buy wired headphones. Especially when on the laptop, the benefit of being wireless is barely there. Not that I wouldn't want wireless, but the drawback of that mode with BT edge cases, empty batteries etc. make me think accepting wires is just more comfortable and less of an annoyance.

That depends on your tolerance for charging for ten mins once every few days or so and reconnecting vs occasionally getting a wire tangled/under the wheel of the chair/forcibly yanked when you forget you are wearing them when you stand up.

It’s pretty 50 50 for me but the physical minimalism and not having the wire/socket wear out swung it in the end.

Actually if you put some effort in, wires become pretty manageable. I use a special technique to roll up my in-ears and a clip to hold them in-place while in my pocket. For my over-the-ear headphones I use cable-management spools to match the cable length to my usually distance on the desk.

Although I admit, I own a FiiO BTR 5 that has BT and I can plug in my in-ear wired headphones - so I occasionally have a need for wireless listening. The battery of the FiiO is 13-15h however, and I also use it for other purposes (wired external headphone preamp). Additionally, in case the battery runs flat, I can always just insert the headphones directly into the device directly as a fallback.

Oh man, so that's why my earbuds act so wonky...

That's right. Bluetooth works great in 1-to-1 and 1-to-many relationships, but not in many-to-many.

I've gotten in the habit of just always putting my devices into pairing mode when I want to use them, which seems to work OK.

I use my headphones (85h) with both my Android tablet and my Android phone (and it does work 100% of the time), so there is progress, but it's truly glacial. It's limited to two devices and they can't even play simultaneously.

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