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Bluetooth an OS 9 / X
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2001
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Dec 3, 2001, 11:26 AM
 
Anyone heared of some device and driver/software support for bluetooth under OS 9/X.
I remember to have read something about people connecting to their Nokia cell-phones via bluetooth in OS X.

Thanks in advance!
     
Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: London
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Dec 6, 2001, 04:59 AM
 
This is the situation with Bluetooth on the mac (as far as I can tell.)

I spoke to a KeySpan guy at MacExpo 2001 (London) and he said that they were definitely looking into developing bluetooth dongles for the mac (but are waiting for a stack).

There are (a few) Bluetooth hardware adapters out there on the market already (USB,PCMCIA) but they will not just plug into a mac and work.

Before any bluetooth hardware device will work on the mac there needs to be a BlueTooth protocol "Stack" and API written for the OS. This is more likely to happen in X than 9, since in OS 9 it would have to be written by Apple, whereas the core of X is Darwin (an open source Unix - so in theory any individual/group could add it - given a big enough brain!).

Apple's stance on new technology is weird - everything has to be a secret, and then a massive surprise if it finally makes it to hardware.

I hope Apple has the foresight to see that BlueTooth has a real future, throughout IT and could be as revolutionary as USB (and therefore should be adopted as rapidly).

<devil's advocate> Of course Bluetooth is a massive protocol that's taken about ten years to come to fruition and Apple can't be expected to start embarking on massive S/W engineering tasks when they are still working damn hard (we hope) on other components on OS X: Where is the Ir-DA API? where is USB printer sharing? Where is the GUI for samba connections? Etc....

short answer - sometime over the next year we will se something for mac and bluetooth, and once there is one thing, more will come.

This is the (only) down-side of Apple's Integrated H/W S/W policy - the hardware platform moves up in jumps (like an OS), whereas on a PC there is no hardware standard: That's why WinTel users will always claim that their system is 'better' - haven't we all heard the following:

Mac user: "wow these new G4s are fast"
PC User: "not as fast as a PC - you can have a PC with a XXX video card and XXX memory and a XXX processor and XXX drives."

What they don't tell you is that their dream-machine will not be as reliable or stable as the Mac (which has an OS built to deal specifically with that hardware.)

WOW! where did that come from? - slightly OT....
     
Cribson  (op)
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Dec 7, 2001, 04:44 AM
 
Thanks for your reply, let's hope and wait!

About the OT, I know what you mean!
     
   
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