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AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem

(github.com)
1424 points moonleay | 1 comments | 16 Nov 25 00:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.289s | source
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moonleay ◴[16 Nov 25 00:02 UTC] No.45941605[source]▶
A cool project, when you want to use AirPods outside of Apples ecosystem. Sadly, you have to use a rooted android device with a small patch due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
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jmgao ◴[16 Nov 25 03:12 UTC] No.45942451[source]▶
It doesn't seem obvious to me that this is actually a bug in the Android implementation, it seems like this is due to AirPods violating the spec and requiring a special handshake before responding to standard requests. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect Android to work around a device that appears to be intentionally breaking the spec for vendor lock-in purposes: the possibility of them just OTAing an update that breaks in some other way means that you'd have to be entirely bug compatible with iOS's bluetooth implementation.
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a13n ◴[16 Nov 25 04:20 UTC] No.45942736[source]▶
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
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1. Aurornis ◴[16 Nov 25 05:37 UTC] No.45943031[source]▶
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.