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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Bluetooth file transfer is not accessible enough for non-technical people? I mean I guess you have to mark the device you want to send to as "discoverable". If anything the real problem is that it's not very fast, but that's only an issue if you are sending particularly large files. This is still often my go-to solution aside from Tailscale's Taildrop feature.

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>Bluetooth file transfer is not accessible enough for non-technical people?

It's incredibly difficult. Do you have any idea how "non-technical" these "non-technical" people are? I know people that use phone every day to make calls as send messages, take photos, browse Facebook, read emails and they could not send an email with a file attachment to save their life. Asking that kind of person to:

1. Enable Bluetooth and make device discoverable

2. Enable Bluetooth on another device.

3. Pair the devices.

4. Find an option to send the file

5. Accept the file in another device.

6. Wait for the file transfer to finish.

7 (bonus). File transfer failed for some reason and you have to start again.

It's simply impossible.

We did it all the time before smartphones, 'bluetoothing' ringtones or images (especially if lucky enough to have a 'cameraphone') to each other.

I suppose it depends what you mean by 'non-technical', maybe our parents couldn't have and we were 'tech-savvy' in the way that children are, but this was normal, what everyone did, and of course many in 'non-technical' work now, didn't study CS, etc.

lol.

You elongated this by assuming Bluetooth is disabled on both devices, which is not the default state on any OS I am aware of. The actual step list looks like this:

1. Enable Bluetooth discoverability on the target device.

2. Share file over Bluetooth on source device.

3. Accept the file transfer on target device.

You don't need to add extra steps for things like "wait", that's the same for any kind of I/O operation such as "copying a file". It's also extremely silly to add something like "Find an option to send the file". On most operating systems, it's just not that hard. On Android it's in the normal "Share" popup. So this amazingly difficult and highly technical step is to press "Share" on a file and select Bluetooth.

I could also make turning on a computer sound like a tedious seven step process if I wanted to be an asshole.

>which is not the default state on any OS Irrelevant. It could be intentionally or accidentally disabled by the user.

I don't know why you are so annoyed, but I know for a fact that average non-technical person is incapable of sharing files over Bluetooth on their own, and this probability of incapacity increases with age.

I'm annoyed because it doesn't really matter, misrepresenting the situation by adding steps that aren't really there doesn't strengthen the case, it makes it sillier. I would guess it's more likely that people don't know to use Bluetooth for sharing, more than they simply couldn't figure it out. And to be fair, why would they?

There are a lot of things where simply knowing to do them is a large part of the problem, rather than a literal inability.

You often don't need to pair to send files. I just did it on Android sending to Win 11.

Receiver steps:

1. Double-click bluetooth taskbar icon

2. "Send or receive files via Bluetooth

3. Receive files then wait for sender & transfer

4. Choose location to put the files

Sender steps:

1. Choose file

2. Press Share

3. Choose Bluetooth

4. Choose target device

Four steps on both sides. Slow for a few MB photo though.

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