The Chaser Report - Multi-Pointless Bluetooth | WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Welcome to the Future. Oh, thank you, Charles. It's so nice to be here in the future with you once again. Today we're going to review not a piece of consumer technology so much as a workplace technology. Oh, nice. And the weird thing is not all of these machines have Bluetooth.

So I do apologise in advance. But what I can say for certain is that all of them are pieces of shit. I also want to salute a new and more advanced kind of Bluetooth, which doesn't work in a way that we haven't discussed before, which is, have you heard of Bluetooth MultiPoint? Ooh, that sounds good. Yeah, yeah, in multiple ways. We'll find out after this.

Okay, so the first one is they're called Xerox. Have you heard about Xerox? Yes. Yeah, so Xerox used to be the gold standard in photocopiers and scanners. So much so that Xerox meant photocopy at one point. Yes, exactly. In 2013, Xerox released the Xerox Work Centre line of scanners and photocopies, right? And there are currently several hundred thousand of these out in the workplaces across the world.

So I think premium brand, premium product. So they're pretty good. They photocopy things. They scan things. It's just one, one floor with them. I mean, what's one floor between customers and? And zero. Can you guess what the floor is?

Well, they don't photocopy? No, no, they totally photocopy. And their photocopies look amazing. Like, they look like complete reproductions of, you know, the documentary photocomically. Actually, I'm going to guess if this is an office product from my time working in corporate offices, I'm going to guess that they don't connect properly to networks and you can't actually I'm absolutely certain that is also true. Oh, so it's not that.

No, no. You go into this network and you take 20 minutes and you still. can't print. This is a very specific known bug in the work line line, works into line of photocopies and scanners. Well, because it's 2023, Charles, let me ask you this, are they racist?

They only scan white or something. I'm just wondering if some skin tones get you know. No. Okay. What it is, it's the most amazing bug ever, which is that they sometimes without telling you,

change numbers in the photocopy. So say you're photocopying a document and there's some numbers on there. Most of the time it'll just photocopy normally. Like if it's a budget, say, that's got all these numbers on it. Okay, yeah. But occasionally it'll just, you know, change a six into a four or, you know, a three into a nine. How? How does it do that?

This is the thing. So apparently it's not an OCR problem. It's not that the scanner and the photocopier is like interpreting what's on the document. It's nothing to do with that. It's to do with the resolution. On a normal setting, it scans at 200 dots per inch. And apparently it sort of uses this sort of basic AI technology to make the document seem sharper than actual scanning. So if there's a 5, it might think it's a 6.

and then correct it to look more like a six. Yeah, yeah. That's a very big call for a photocopy to make. I think that's a six. But it's not, no, I think it's more like it's sort of, it's not sort of going, oh, five or six, it's just going, oh, I've seen that shape before. I'll just fix it up to be a bit sharper.

Right. But occasionally just gets it completely wrong. So, you know, like it's sort of, think of it as the chat GPT of photocopies, very confident, it looks perfect. but just can be incredibly wrong. And apparently, it's had the most amazing sort of ripple effect across the business world because, you know, you'll photocopy an invoice and suddenly pay the wrong amount.

That's so good. I mean, I must say, I like that finally there's a piece of technology that just wings it. The just guys are, fuck it, it's probably a three. That's right. I don't know. And correct it. That's so hilarious. Like, they could have just had, as per previous photocopiers,

it could have just reproduced the image as accurately as it could, without actually making any changes to the image. Yes. But to both have the technology to go, oh, look, we need to fix it up, and then to do it badly. Yeah. It's so hilarious. It's so much more and less advanced at the same time.

So the bug was first reported on July the 24th, 2013. Well, you think it's 2013. Who knows when it was. Exactly. So Xerox knew about this bug. It wasn't until, I think, 2019 until they released a patch for it. But apparently, most people don't. patch their photocopies and scanners.

I'm just thinking of the applications. Imagine that you've got some court documents and, you know, you're being charged with committing eight murders. But the photocopy goes, it looks like a zero to me. Zero murders. Off you go. Yeah. Just amazing.

So, look, I don't have much more to say about it. Like, there's literally, Xerox have yet to comment on it. And there's actually, in the article that I'm ready from, it just is the reason. reason why they haven't commented on this bug that's been there for pretty much a decade is that they don't want publicity about it. I bet they don't. It just makes me think of that famous, famous saying, Charles, you had one job, except for zero. It's zero. Zero jobs. Zero jobs accomplished. Well done. Now, Charles, onto Bluetooth multi-point. I just wanted to talk about this because this is something that we've tracked for a long time. Bluetooth is really the core of

the Welcome to the Future offering, the endless unreliability of all Bluetooth devices. And here's the thing, Bluetooth MultiPoint is a technology that allows you to do some amazing things. So it works particularly well with headphones. So let's say you've got a pair of Bluetooth headphones, for instance, a Bose set of quiet comfort headphones, whatever it might be. And you're there connected to your work laptop. But then you want to do a little bit of gaming as well on your personal device or watch a

movie on your iPad or something like that. Yes. Wouldn't it be great if you could connect to both your work laptops, so if an email comes in or whatever or there, or even if you're in a teleconference, you're still connected to that, but at the same time you're connected to another device. So you've got two sound devices going to the one earphone. I've got a Bose blue sound color thing, me jig,

like a little soundbar thing, like a portable one. And it often connects to both mine and my son's phones at the same time. you turn it on, it connects to two things. And I can tell you what happens is neither of them then were. Yes, that's the genius of Bluetooth multipoint. So when did multi-point start happening? I mean, in recent time, I think it's because Apple came up with the feature in the AirPods where it can switch between your different Apple devices automatically.

Oh, can it really? Yeah, and airports don't even need to be registered. You'd register it with one device. So hang on. And it just switches automatically between them based on what you use. Do the airports use Bluetooth? They do, but they've got their own chip as well. I can't know what it's called.

It's H1 or something. But then actually hands it off. Because Apple went, well, the Bluetooth protocol is shithouse, so we'll need to augment it with our own stuff. So, for instance, I've got a pair of Sony noise-canceling headphones. And does it work? Does this multipoint thing work for it? Well, the first set that I had didn't have it.

And I was really annoyed. But then I saw that they had one with multipoint. I thought, oh, that's really handy. I can have reconnected with my laptop, but also if I get, if the phone rings, I can just answer the phone. Yes. Very handy if you're walking around, listening to music and, you know, whatever it might be, two things at once, very handy.

The genius of it was that the multi-point one, it really doesn't work. What it does is if you have your laptop anywhere nearby, it will connect to the other device. Like let's say your laptop in your bag and you're walking along listening to music on your headphones with your phone, it will constantly drop that out and reconnect to the laptop sitting in your bag doing nothing. Yes, because it can't. seem to do two things at once. It doesn't actually, like when I connect to, when my son's phone and my phone connect, it's whoever's transmitting something first, then gets.

Well, the same implementation is even worse than that. It's when you're not transmitting anything. It's just connects to it. And presumably that it's thinking is, well, you know, Dom's really close with his, you know, phone or something like that. He clearly wants the device that's far away connected so that he can hear it. Like, he'd already be able to hear his phone. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's right. I'll connect the distant one. That's when it's closed. Yeah, just in case anything happens. Well, the genius of the Sony implementation of this technology, though, is that you can manually switch it. So that's fine. All you need to do is open the Sony headphones app,

scroll through, and then use that to switch the source. The only problem is it's not connected to your phone at the time. So we have to then open your laptop. Oh. Yeah. Oh, that's genius. We haven't talked previously about this amazing new technology that allows you to not listen to multiple devices.

Yes. Because that was always the problem with Bluetooth is it was just a single point of failure. Whereas there are multiple points of failure. It's very, very impressive. Yes. Because I was getting to the point where we're just to one simple device and one pair of Bluetooth headphones. Yes.

I don't want to say this, but it was almost getting fairly reliable. Dom. You turn on the Bluetooth headphones. It was the one Bluetooth thing that kind of worked. It would actually generally connect. But they've managed to find a way to make it completely hopeless. Because these days, how many of us have more than one Bluetooth device that can speak to our wireless headphones, right?

Like, we've got lots of devices. Yeah, yeah. So it's an amazing way to make sure it doesn't work with any of them. Can I ask, do you think maybe what should happen? Like, is there some way to have a sort of Bluetooth hub where you can see all the different Bluetooth devices? You can tell them what to do? And then you can, yeah, exactly.

Like you could tell them what to do, and then they fail to do that in a hub. That's the genius of Bluetooth, though, is that you can't do that because it would have to have connected to the hub to be told what to do and then have to disconnect. Now, I do want to, before we leave this topic, I want to pay tribute to Apple for having, as I said, its own implementation that works very well. If I have my AirPods on my laptop and I get a phone call, it just switches over, it's fine. I can even use it with my Apple TV.

The problem with it is that if I carry my AirPods around with me, it constantly pops up on any device that I'm using telling me that I've lost my AirPods. Yes. They're in my pocket. Yes. But they keep telling me your airports haven't been seen. I freak out.

Oh my gosh, those things are so fucking expensive. I can't afford new ones. And then they're in my pocket over and over and over again. And then the other day for the first time, it said an unknown pair of AirPods is traveling with you, which is the freakiest alert you can get. Because you know this thing. People are using air tags

and all these devices, air tags are the Bluetooth trackers, to stalk people. Yes. And I thought, well, who's put their AirPods on me? Yeah, maybe you're in. Yeah, it was just me. I was stalking myself. Oh, it just didn't recognize the earbuds.

Apple had forgotten that my AirPods were my AirPods. And it detected alien AirPods traveling with me as well. So I was a bit disappointed by that. No one was bothering. Because they could get you into real trouble, couldn't it? Yes. You'd really freak out. Yeah.

You'd absolutely panic. Yeah. But then I remember it was still, even though it was Apple, It was still Bluetooth. Yeah, exche technology, it was still Bluetooth. Because that was one of the huge problems with the Vision Prolaunch, I felt. Yes. Not enough emphasis on Bluetooth.

I think the word Bluetooth was used. And you're quite right. If the connection that it has to all these devices is via Bluetooth, then... But you know what, Charles? I don't think it uses Bluetooth. No, it doesn't use Bluetooth because it's all... It's got a computer built into it. Yes.

It's got a whole computer. No. That must be why they did it. That must be why it cost $3,500,000 because other the meta headsets, I think, use Bluetooth to connect to another device. Yes. So Apple's gone. If we spend $5,200 Australian dollars on a device, it might be overpriced.

It'll be very heavy, but at least it won't have fucking Bluetooth in it. Yep, perfect solution. Worth it. If this takes off, we might have to cancel this podcast. Our gear is from Roby. We are part of the Iconiclass Network. Catch you next week.