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Comment by glhaynes | Hacker News Reader

iOS 7 has, for the first time, support for not just Bluetooth keyboards but Bluetooth mice as well.

Wait, what? If this is true, it certainly hasn't been talked about much.

Edit: I should be more straightforward — I don't believe this is true.

I believe it supports them, just like it supports game controllers now, but apps will have to include their own implementation of support to actually make use of them. It doesn't seem that iOS 7 supports using a mouse/touchpad by default throughout the OS itself.

Looks like apps can only support arbitrary Bluetooth devices if they're the Bluetooth Low Energy type: http://stackoverflow.com/a/11892685. Conventional Bluetooth devices would have to go through the MFi program to be supported by App Store apps.

Nor can I get it to work with either an iPad or iPhone 5 running iOS 7, using a MS BT Notebook mouse or Apple's own BT trackpad. The devices don't even see the pointing devices (or more accurately, they see them but they're not telling me in the UI). I've got an Apple BT mouse lying around somewhere that I'll try, but I doubt the results will change.

i actually love how you can just hook up a mouse & keyboard to android via bluetooth and put the screen to the TV via HDMI. Very convenient

Not just mice and keyboards either, Android has a surprisingly large number of devices and device types supported. Even I am left surprised at what "just works" on an Android device.

Android did this ages ago. What's the news here?

That it is "innovation" when Apple does it, and for Apple users nothing that happens outside of their very narrow ecosystem exists.

Oooh, yes, definitely, let's have this discussion again!

Why are the endless, tedious contribution like this not downvoted to oblivion as being offtopic? The topic is IOS 7, if you want to talk about Android start your own thread, failing that, take your witless preaching elsewhere.

BT keyboard has been supported back when original iPad was released. But BT mouse hasn't so far. If it is supported, then I think iPhone 5S could have the potential of being the first pocket size workstation.

You can get BT mouse support on a jailbroken device since iOS 2.0 or 3.

Ya I would love some more details on how this can be used.

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