The Vergecast - The Bluetooth Holiday Spec-tacular

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Chris Welch, and Sean Hollister celebrate the holiday season with a full show dedicated to Bluetooth. 03:57 - We play Bluetooth Jeopardy! Play along here 30:38 - The crew discuss the many codecs layered onto the Bluetooth spec, and where the standard is headed. 46:56 - Former Bluetooth SIG executive director Dr. Mike Foley joins the show to discuss his time in charge of Bluetooth. Happy Holidays! Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Connected to mobile device. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular, the flagship podcast of the holidays, of all of the holidays. All of them. The one episode a year will we dive deep into a spec that makes all of our lives go. We've done HGMI. This year we're doing Bluetooth. Alex Kranz is here.

Hey, Alex. Hey, I am wearing Bluetooth headphones just this once in honor of the holiday spectacular. And that's why Alex sounds bad. Thank you, Alex, for joining. us with your compressed audio. We love it. Chris Welch and Sean Hollister are going to join us. We're going to have a bit of a discussion about Bluetooth, the standard, where it's going, what it means, what it could turn into. We're going to play a round of Bluetooth Jeopardy, which is so hard. Let me tell you. So hard. Whatever you think Bluetooth Jeopardy is when I say we're going to play Bluetooth

Jeopardy, it is so much harder than you think it's going to be. You're going to watch a struggle through that. We do great. It was fun. We had a good time. Yeah. And then we're going to interview the former executive director of the Bluetooth sig, Dr. Mike Foley. We tried to get the current director of the Bluetooth sig. That's the standards body that oversees Bluetooth. It's a holidays, so he couldn't do it.

Mike Foley, the former director, he's the one who launched Bluetooth 3.0. He oversaw Bluetooth. Man's a shark. He joined us. He had some very interesting things to say about the status of Bluetooth, how political it is and where it might be going. I mean, all in all, when you think of the holidays, you think of one hour, of extremely deep Bluetooth conversation. Alex, I don't know what you think of.

That's all I think about. I want to know the Codex. Yeah, I think about Codex. The children are sleeping. The gifts are wrapped. The little blue pairing lights are blinking. It's going to be great. Alex, what headset are you on right now? I'm on my AirPods Pro, I think. How's the Bluetooth? You know, it's fine. It's not shutting off right now because I'm not leaving my house. Every time I leave my house, it dies. Like, just instant shuts down. but I'm on the road to Texas and it sounds good enough. I'm very happy to be with you in this moment in this holiday season and season of giving and love.

When I think about how to express my love for you and the Vergecast audience, it is definitely one hour of talking about Bluetooth. A hundred percent. It was actually on my Christmas wish list this year. And get ready, everyone. All right. Like I said, Bluetooth Trepity. It is so much harder than you think. We brought it. minds in the holiday spirit. We're going to take the break. We're going to come back. We're going to play around with Bluetooth Shepard.

Cue the sleigh bells. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's

backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prom's something like Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all.

I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. This is Bluetooth Jeopardy. Now entering the studio are today's contestants. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Master of Plex Media Server, Alex Crams.

Our resident earbud quality tester, originally from Rockland County, New York, Chris Welk. and the Virges Editor-in-Chief from Racine, Wisconsin, Nelai Patel. And now, here's the host of Bluetooth Jeopardy, Sean Hollister. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. If you know how to play Jeopardy, you know how to play this, except every question is related to one of our favorite short-range wireless standards. The person to pick first is the first person to hold up a Bluetooth device on screen. Let's hear from our contestants. What are you holding, Deli?

It's an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Does I count? That counts. Sure. I'll take it. Alex, is that a Bluetooth trackball you have there? Yes, but it was also I was holding up my iPhone 14 Pro not Max because I have small hands. Oh my God. I'm literally holding a Bluetooth mouse and I forgot to hold up the Bluetooth mouse and I held up my phone instead. And Chris, what is your Bluetooth pick? I've got a Pixel 7 in my hand. Is this how Jeopardy works? All right, all right. Good luck.

And let's go to work. Let's look at today's categories. We have Genesis, the early days of Bluetooth. Pear me, please. Each answer will be a Bluetooth device. Spectacular. We get into the specs of Bluetooth. Bluetooth.com, some PR messaging from Bluetooth we found on their site.

Hackweek, the security concerns of Bluetooth. And of course, Popery. Will you start us off? Alex Kranz. Yeah, I'm going to take pot-per-ri for 200. Alex. That is popery, and the answer is. The first Bluetooth device, a hands-free mobile headset,

earned a best-of-show award at this trade show, Chris Welch. I'll be there in a matter of weeks. What is CES? Be wrong, be wrong. Yes! Alex Kranz. What is Mobile World Congress? Incorrect.

Nelai. What is? Cedia. I'm afraid that's not the correct answer. What is Comdex? Old-ass standard. Predated CES, technically. Yes, Comdex turned into CES.

Can Chris get like half a point? No. Is this how Jeopardy works? Are we allowed to use Jeopardy as much as we're saying Jeopardy? Deli, you may pick the next category. It's my turn still. It should be. I'm seating consideration to our editor achieve.

I will take, Paramee, please, for 200. If you really want to pawn noobs, we'll connect this gaming system, which was the first to use both Bluetooth and Blue Ray Technologies, Alex Kranz. What is the PlayStation 3? That's correct. Oh, she got it. Yes. I'm in the zeros. You pick the next category.

Gen of five sis for a thousand. Bluetooth was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to this data cable. Alex Cranz. I want you to know my strategy today is to just hit the buzzer as soon as Sean starts asking the questions every time. But I think maybe what is scuzzy? Wow. I know that's wrong. Wrong.

Nelai Patel. What is the 2.5 millimeter headphone cable? Incorrect. Oh, well, it was worth a shot. If it's USB, I'm going to be so mad. Chris, can you just try and see if it's USB? I'm going to keep my lead here. The correct response in this case.

case is RS 232. I would have also accepted cereal. Definitely had the one right in the back pocket. Scuzzy is like cereal. No, it's not. Cranes, you're next. I'm going to do Jenna Fives this for 800. Oh, God. This was the data transfer speed of Bluetooth 1.0 in 1999. Alex Cran, slam, Bameram is the exact text I have in my buzzer window. What is one megabit? Close. Anyone else? Does it mean I lost? Yes. What is 750 kilobits?

That is also very close. What is 751 kilobits? The correct answer is 721 kilobits per second. Zero points out of negatives per second. Would any if you like to take a moment to reflect on how we all have negative scores going into this? We're doing great. Nilai is in the lead with negative 2000. Is that the lead?

I think Chris is in the lead with negative 200. That's correct. Cranz, pick the next, please. I'm going to mix it up a little. Bluetooth.com 400. This is a new Bluetooth audio capability that would allow multiple devices to find and join an audio podcast via Bluetooth in areas like concert venues and airports,

and this question is very long. Welch. What is ORACAST? That's correct. Wow. I'm very proud of myself for one correct answer. We have a positive score on the board. Pick the next.

Let's get wild. Let's do hack week for a thousand. This open source USB device could sniff and monitor Bluetooth signals from nearby devices using an antenna powered by an arm cortex M3 chip. Cran slab Mabab. What is the coconut? No. Can I have a clarification on the rules?

Am I allowed to Google the answer? Now, the correct answer is the Uber-Tooth 1. Okay. Stupid name. Chris Welch. Oh, okay. Let's go for Bluetooth.com for 600, please. Competing with standards like Zygby and Thread, this standard is designed to allow multiple Bluetooth devices to operate as beacons for large-scale device networks.

Chris Welch. What is Bluetooth mesh? Yes. You pick next. Let's do, Parme, please, for 800. This model of this fruitful computer introduced both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for the first time in 2016. What is the Raspberry Pi? Yes.

Yes, Nely and I are tied now. You're going down, Kranz. I'm going to do Popperi for 800. FCC filings by GameStop in 2020 depicted a Bluetooth speaker that looked like this Pokemon. Neelai Patel. I only know the name of one Pokemon and it's Pikachu and it's got to be Pikachu. No. Damn it.

Alex Cranz. What is Charmander? Incorrect. Now we just have to name Pokemon for the rest of the show. Chris, Buzzin. Buzzin, you got this. Those are the only two I know. I'm going to throw in the towel on this one.

The correct response in this case is jigglypuff. I was going to say jigglypuff. And I was like, it's got to be one of the starters. Neelai and Alex, given that you are currently in negative numbers, How do you plan to pay back the money? I'm going to go with Spectacular by 200. This system introduced with Bluetooth 2.0 increased the security provided by a Bluetooth link, as well as making the pairing process more user-friendly.

Eli Patel. What is EDR? No. Alex Kranz. So actually, is Bluetooth even secure? No, it just says increase the security. It didn't say secure. Who's determined that?

Can I get some clarification? I'm sorry, we're out of time. Alex is filibustering jeopardy. The correct answer is simple, secure pairing. Nilai, you go again. Spectacular for 400. One of the most significant changes in this version of Bluetooth was the ability to transfer data over Wi-Fi. Neelai.

What is Bluetooth 2.1? No. What is Bluetooth 4.0? Anyone else want to ask? Alex Krantz. What is Bluetooth 3.0? Yes. No.

Yes. Thank you for narrowing it down. Chris is just never going to answer a question again. Exactly. I'm just going to sit on this lead. Currently, we have Chris Welch in the league with 800 points. Alex Cran with the commanding second at negative $2,400. And Neli, bringing up the lead at negative $3,200.

I appreciate that you continue referring to it as the lead. Thank you for that. Alex, it's your pick. I'm going to do spectacular for a thousand. This is Sony's own Bluetooth codec, which enables transmission of high-res audio at a maximum bit rate of 990 kilobits per second. Chris Welch. Time to pad the lead here a little bit.

What is Eldak? Correct. Let's do, par me please, 600. This was the first Kindle to support Bluetooth audio. Alex Cranz. What is the first? original Kindle? No.

I have to go away now. There are so many Kindles. You can just make up names. It has not worked for either of us before this. What is the Oasis? No, the Oasis was not the first with Bluetooth audio. That was the eighth generation Kindle. Something I did not know until today.

I should have just said Kendall. You should have just said Kindle. Chris, you'll continue. Apparently so. Let's do Bluetooth.com for 800. According to ABI research, this many Bluetooth data transfer devices will ship in 2022. Can I ask a clarification question? Sure.

Does that mean like phones? Just anything with Bluetooth in it? No, it's a standard. It's a new standard. It's a thing. Well, I'm not going to try to answer this. Were you just like hell at the spelling bee? You're like, can I define every word, please?

I lost to Buffalo. And we're out of time. The answer is $1 billion. Oh, I was going to guess that. I've been burned too many times. Let's keep going, Chris. Let's do Hackweek for $400. Often seen as a security threat,

sending a picture or message from one user to an unsuspecting user through Bluetooth wireless technology is called this. Alex Kranz. What is my ride home on the subway? I like it, but no. Chris Welch.

What is Beam? No. Okay, I buzzed in. And I want to say, if I guess and it's close to right, I want the points. I'll consider it. What is blue snarffing? The correct answer is, what is blue jacking? See, I knew it was something like that.

It's close enough. Not close enough, unfortunately. He had blue and the verb part down. Yeah. Yeah. See, I knew it was something like that. Once again, Chris Welch had the last correct answer. So let's continue on.

Okay. Let's see what happens when we do, Pair Me, please, for a, This Bluetooth speaker was the most recent number one on our best Bluetooth speaker list at themerger.com. This is cheating. This is cheating. Pristine, detailed sound quality with a surprising amount of bass for its size, all in a rugged design you could take anywhere. Chris Welch. It's possible that I wrote this article.

Possible. What is the Bose soundlink flex? Unfortunately, that is the correct answer. Unfortunately. This was cheating. That's not very fair. Even I can acknowledge that. Good.

Let's keep the good times rolling. Chris Welch, your next category. Hack week for 600, please. In 2004, Nokia and Sony Eric said admitted some of their handsets were vulnerable to this, a method of hacking into a Bluetooth-enabled device and accessing personal information. Alex Kranz.

What is blue snarffing? Correct. What? Yes. Come on, man. It's the worst outcome. And Deli continues to slide into oblivion. First of all, I would like some points for even knowing that blue snarfing was a term.

And having that in my brain. I can't remember people's names. I forgot my own child's name the other day. And I'm holding on to blue snarping. That's worth a thousand points. With the last correct answer, we have Chris Welch with 1,800 points, Alex at negative 2800 and daylight at negative 3,600. I'm sorry, the moral victory of knowing that blue snarthing was a real word is very high,

and I'm currently the winner. I'm just putting that out there. I want you to know, I did not know it was a real word. I thought you made it up. I can't believe I confused blue snarping and bluejacking. That's a rookie Bluetooth Jeopardy mistake. Grads, want to continue this? Yeah, I'm going to do a potpourri for 1,000.

That was my really good Sean Connery impression. That's good. Thanks. This year, the Bluetooth standard organization thought this company was trying to get a free ride by putting Bluetooth branding in cars without paying requisite product declaration fees. Those last five words are in air quotes. We're getting its cars certified. Nelai Patel. Who is Stalantis or FCA?

They're the same company. Yes, it's correct. Yes, I'm deeply aware of when Chrysler is doing dumb things. That's my zone. Neelai, you're next. Oh, no. I can't. I can't, you can't follow the highs with the lows.

Let's go with spectacular for 600. This subset of Bluetooth 4.0 was previously known as Wibri, which was intended for such industries as fitness, security, and home entertainment. It later tried to track the novel coronavirus. Wibri? I will accept Wibri as a pronunciation. And we know what YBri is. You probably know what the answer to this one is.

I do, because I can guess. I mean, just, just, just, just, just, just guess. What is Bluetooth L.E? The correct answer is Bluetooth low energy. There's. Kick us off again. Spectacular for 800. These are sets of specifications or rules that determine how a Bluetooth device is used,

whether it's hand three, has Lanexis or even an iPod accessory. Nelai. What are Bluetooth profiles? Yes. I knew this is my category. And one more. Now I want to stop. Let's go with Bluetooth.com for 200.

This is the standards organization, and they've already buzzed in, the standards organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and licensing of the Bluetooth technologies and trademarks to manufacturers. The answer, Chris Welch. What is the Bluetooth sig? Yes. How did he know? Just got in head of Eli.

Next one, Chris. Okay, let's do pro peri for 600. On the company's website, this speaker. is listed to have nine ways to listen to audio, none of which is pairing via Bluetooth. Alex Cranes. What is the Sonos? Chris, nod or turn away? No, no.

Give me tips. We're moving on. Anybody else want to try. Delai Patel. What is the HomePod Mini? That might be true. The answer is the Apple HomePod. I think the judges can accept that.

Yeah. Next, Neli, you're up again. I got to say the exhilaration of this run. it's too much. You're almost into the positives. Pair me, please, for 400. And the answer, a daily double. Just kidding. There's no round two. Thank God. In 2021, this device had a surprise upgrade that added Bluetooth audio support four years after its initial release. Chris Welch. What is the Nintendo Switch? That's correct. Right. Pick again. Let's just close out theelblitutooth.com for And here's the clue.

Recently it was announced Bluetooth would be expanding into this frequency spectrum band. And according to Bluetooth.com, it will pay of the way for the next 20 years of Bluetooth innovation. We're running out of time. I'm trying to type faster into my phone to Google it, but it's not working. I was like, I can't cheat fast enough. And the correct response in this case is six. The six gigahertz spectrum band. I could have guessed that.

Also handy for certain forms of Wi-Fi. Next, let's go again with Chris. Let's do Hack Week for 200. Three former campaign aides to this elected official told West Wing Playbook she does not use Bluetooth headsets for security reasons and insists on using wired headphones instead. Neelai. Who's Kamala Harris? That's correct.

This story is great. Go again. I'm so clear. Post-the-posive. Let's go with Hackweek for 800. Limited to Class 2 Bluetooth radios, this form of Bluetooth attack creates a backdoor for hackers, which could allow them to listen to all the phone conversations. Give us a hint. Just like a little hint. I have a hint. It is not blue snarf.

Is it jiggly puff? Okay. We're out of time. It's blue bucking. So far in this episode of Jeopardy, we've heard about blue jacking, blue snarping, and now blue bugging. There's nothing left in Hackweek. I was going to say tooth spoofing. with no G at the end. I like it. All right.

We got to knock down this Genesis category. Let's go to Genesis for 200. The King with a Dental problem United Denmark and Norway in 958 AD. Alex Cranz. Who is Harold Bluetooth? I will accept that.

It is King Harold Bluetooth Gormanson. That's misspelled. Someone misspelled this. His name is Harold. Go again. I'm going to do Genesis for 400 and hope Neelai doesn't get it right. Intel, Nokia, and this industry leader met to plan the standardization of Bluetooth in 1996.

Chris Welch. What is Qualcomm? No, Neelai. Who is Sony Erickson? Erickson is the correct answer. Damn it. We'll give you the points. Yes.

Oh, I'm at zero. I'm done. No more answers for me. I fought myself back to negative territory. You're not blue jacking this away from me. Popery for 400. He said this about Bluetooth. There are quality issues.

The bandwidth isn't high enough. And even if it does get there someday, people don't want to recharge their headphones. Nelai. Who is Steve Jobs? Yes. That's a classic Steve Jobs quote. As we go into our last two questions, we have Chris Welch in the lead with 2000, Neelai at 400, and Alex at negative $3,000.

I can still bring this around. That leaves our final question. Genesis for 600. And the answer is, this was the first mobile phone to include Bluetooth in 2001. Somewhere Deiderbone is crying that he can't be answering this question right now. And nobody is buzzing in. Can we say a company?

You can say whatever you like. Whether you get the points or not, we'll depend on how close it is. Nelai. What is the Nokia N92? Not even close. Anyone else? Anyone else? Three, two, one.

The answer is the Sony Erickson T-39. I would have also accepted T-36. Okay, I would like some points for saying brand name and letters and numbers. You get that. I got the format of the answer correct. Don't take his points away. He was in the positive. I wasn't like, what is the HGC bacon?

I was like, what are some letters and numbers? All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be right back with Final Jeopardy. This is David at the Verge, and this is the Motorola hint. This is sort of the smallest of the announcements that Motorola had today. It's a tiny little Bluetooth headset. They don't want to call it a Bluetooth headset because there's all sorts of stigmas with that, but it's a Bluetooth headset. It's made to be super discreet and nice looking.

It comes in this wood, plus a bunch of other materials that are designed to look really, really nice in your ear. And on one level, it's just a Bluetooth headset. You put it in your ear, you make phone calls. You can do voice control on the phone, and there's all this cool Motorola assist and Motorola actions and stuff that all work, but on the other hand, it's kind of extra special for a Bluetooth headset. For the one thing, it's tiny.

For another thing, it's super sensitive. So it's made to go in your ear just like this, and there's a sensor on it that recognizes when it's in your ear and it'll automatically turn on and connect. And then as soon as you take it out, it'll disconnect, and even if you're on a call, it'll route it straight back to your phone. So it's made to be super simple and to basically be worn all day, but you can have it come and go as you please. So it's $149.

It's designed to be used with the new MotoX and the MotoG, but it'll work the lots of other phones too. There's some special stuff with the way that WotoX works that makes it even better for voice actions. But the Moto Hint is designed as really, it's a wearable. It's not a Bluetooth headset, though. It's kind of a Bluetooth headset. So the hint is kind of a weird little accessory. I'm not sure how many people are going to get into it. I kind of like it, but we'll see how it does when it comes out with the MotoX this fall. 2014. Okay, we're back. This is our final Jeopardy question. The first version of Bluetooth used a modulation scheme called this, which modulated

carrier shifts between two frequencies representing ones and zeros. You have 30 seconds. Good luck. The police are coming because we're playing this music. I'm very worried at this entire situation. All right. Let's see what our contestants wrote. Chris, you're in the lead, so let's begin. You have 2,000 points. What was your answer? I have no answer, but I also wagered no money, and I drew a smiley face. To signal my victory. Well played. Nelai. All right.

I wagered $5,000 and I wrote frequency shift pulsing. Hmm. Uh? Interesting. That was not the answer. Let's see how much it's going to cost you. $5,000? Okay.

Alex Cranz with negative $3,000. What did you decide to dip your pockets into? So I put a billion dollars on the line for binary baby. shuffle. Excellent. Excellent. The correct answer was GFSK.

I was close. Galsian frequency shift keying. I got some words in there. That counts. I feel like some of your random words

were among the right words. Something to do with the frequency. Use the word frequency and the word shift, which are in the question. He gets 2,500. Give him 2,500. He earned it.

Don't put him in the negative. And the winner of today is Chris Welch with 2,000 FTCS tokens. Thank you for playing. Chris has won nothing. You know, I would be in the lead if I remembered the difference between bluejacking and blue snarthing. I just want to put that out there. We'll be right back with more of the Bluetooth holiday spectacular. Support for the show comes from Framer.

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No endless searcher required. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UP-W-R-K.com. Upwork.com. Happy holidays and welcome back to the Verchast Bluetooth holiday spectacular. Full hour of audio about Bluetooth. We've got an all-star panel here on a holiday Bluetooth spectacular.

Talk about Bluetooth where it is now, the future of it, and the many threats that face our favorite. low range and quite honestly overtaxed wireless standard. It's all the same people who play to Jeopardy. Like, what are we doing here? I'm here. I'm Nealai. Chris Welch is here. Hey, Chris Welch is here. Hey, Chris.

Sean Halcer, who was the host of Jeopardy, now finds himself on the other side of the equation. Welcome, Sean. It is horror. I am your friend who wishes I had some earbuds that had pairing to multiple devices at once. It'd be great. And Cranz is here.

Hey, Kranz. I'm your friend who's pissed at Sean for his rude scoring of of me during Jeopardy. Yeah, Sean, I don't know if you understand. The point of this segment is revenge, taking, of course, our inspiration from Bluetooth, the notorious pirate who sought only revenge. I have not read anything about said pirate.

I just, he's a pirate. The verge has been about revenge for a very long time. It's fitting that we bring it back for Christmas. Sean and I are, these are founders. We founded this whole site on revenge, so this is all fitting. Okay, let's talk about Bluetooth in the context of the holidays. Chris, you cover the headphones, pretty carefully.

It seems like the moment for Bluetooth right now is everyone has hit the bandwidth limits of Bluetooth as we know it, and they're doing stuff next to it. They're doing stuff on top of it. What is going on here? Yeah. I mean, I think they're all trying to just kind of stand out with their headphone quality. Samsung has their own Kodak. You've got Sony with LDAQ, which is actually kind of spread between a bunch of headphone makers.

And then there's Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound, which might be CD quality sometime soon. but you're going to need new earbuds and who knows, it's probably a new phone. I got pitches literally today. We're not to CD quality yet? I mean, Sony's close-ish. Samsung says they can do a 24-bit audio on the Buds 2 Pro, but like the actual bit rate is unclear. So who knows what quality it actually is? It's all just a mess.

But like, yeah, the idea is that they can say like these products are now hi-fi or just sound better than they did before. So you upgrade and buy a new set of headphones or earbuds. They'll now work with title. Yeah, title, but no Spotify, hi-fi, which was announced almost two years ago and has yet to come to fruition. So the protocol itself is like just a few megabits per second, right? That's all you can transmit between really two devices at a time. And so that's the hesitation here? Yeah, that and plus like the actual, so the file codex, so Apple's used the AEC codec forever.

They felt no need to ever go beyond that so far. By the way, Apple will claim that the actual codec they use between the phone and AirPods. is they're tweaking it all the time and improving it all the time. This is what they claim. Is it stock AAC, or is Apple messing with an AAC on the edges all the time to do some proprietary AirPod stuff

that no one else has access to? We don't know. We can't verify what they're actually doing between their own devices and their closed ecosystem. And this is what everyone else seems to be doing, right? Like you are stuck with a handful of codex that you can license from Snapchat or Sony or whatever,

but you're stuck with some basic limitations. of Bluetooth, and then you have to add on to them or do something proprietary to add more features or more sound quality. And that doesn't seem like the industry is settled on standards. It seems like Samsung is basically like, wouldn't it be cool if everyone bought Samsung headphones and they bought a galaxy phone? Yeah, I mean, when you have like seven different codecs, there's just a lot going on. And I don't know how anybody really keeps it straight. Like, someone who just goes and buys a new pair of headphones from like Senheiser or Bowers and Wilkins, like they support stuff like Apptics and like Apptics HD and Apptics,

flossless. Even that one standard has like four tiers of different support. So it's gotten a bit jumbled. I think part of this is that the standards aren't very good. Like I just wrote about this with the steam deck. If you want to set up your Bluetooth earbuds and hear what you're doing on your game system, the default is that it uses a profile that is not low latency. It's supposed to be like high quality instead of low latency. And so you have this tremendous lag. And I swing a sword and I don't hear it. until almost an entire second is past. Where's my wish? I want to hear my wish. But they have to choose between the high quality of their low latency.

You don't get both automatically. So with Sony, if you use the L.DEC Kodak and you choose like the highest setting, I think it's like 960 like kilowatts per second, it gets like really unstable when it cuts out constantly. So even that at its best quality just doesn't work very well. So I think there is like a next step to come. And it sounds like Qualcomm has new chips coming for phones. that ends them for headphones too that'll make things more stable

and hopefully keep that higher quality and actually so you can enjoy it and not just have cutouts all the time. So Apple uses AAC, other people are using other proprietary codecs like LBAC and Snapchat and sound. Yeah. Great name.

But it sounds like there's an actual Bluetooth audio codec upgrade coming with LC3. It sounds like there's functionality updates coming with Orica. What's going on there? So I haven't really looked into Oricast much. I think it's just going to be one of those things

where you can pair with like multiple devices at once or like several phones can compare to one speaker, things like that. theoretically, I love this idea. You're going to be in your airport or your hospital and you're listening to your music on your earbuds. But you've also apparently opted in to connect to like the local oracast access point. And so you'll hear your airport announcement.

And instead of them trying to like pump up the sound to a ridiculous level, which blows at everybody's ears just so they can get through the earbuds that you have on, it'll just go directly there and hopefully also not blow out your ears. Like magic. Yeah, they're going to find a way to use that for advertising in one second. I just know how this goes. That seems interesting, right? Like, everything is wireless.

There are new seatback. I think United has new seatbacks, entertainment units that have Bluetooth. But the actual, like, LC3 codec functionality, it's not out yet. When's that coming? I think it's starting to roll out. The latest version of Android supports it. And there are some earbuds that will get updates for it. But it's not so much about quality.

Like, it's about more efficiency. And so it's not so much going to, like, change the game in terms of, like, you know, like lossless streaming or any of that. It's just going to be more efficient and should work better. So it'll approve battery life. Yeah, stuff like that. So Chris just like, let's run down the list here. So Sony has LDAQ. It tops out at 990.

You're saying it's unreliable. There's standard Bluetooth SBC, which tops out at 328. Mm-hmm. The fact that we're only at CD quality. And I get why people say CD quality because once you get above it, it's very hard for people to hear the difference. Right. I mean, most people say that you can't even tell the difference between like AAC and CD quality. And that's what Apple said for years and years and years until suddenly there was spatial audio and lossless on Apple music. But Apple stuff even over wireless. There's no lossless over any wireless connection to an Apple product. Right. Right. And even on a phone, they kind of want you to plug in a different DAC to get lossless out of it. So just compare and contrast these codex for me. Like inside of Bluetooth, there's a bunch of ways to get audio out. And most of them are here. hitting a limit. And then there's the functionality stuff like ORECAST, pair your stuff to any TV you're walking by simply. There's Apple's H1 and H2 chips where they're, they're controlling the

connection more directly in a proprietary way that no one else has access to. There's fast pair on Android. What's left of this standard? Like, what's the point? I think it's just a case for people just build on top of it and build on top of it and build on top of it and see how far they can push it. I mean, you've also got like spatial audio and all that stuff that's on the AirPods. coming soon to the pixel buds pro. It's already on Samsung earbuds. So how can we build on top of just the core earbuds experience and keep selling new pairs?

Because if they sound great, then that's not all that matters, obviously. They want to like... Isn't the core experience, though, kind of crummy? Like, I think we all make the sacrifice of using these earbuds because they're way more convenient and also because everybody got rid of the port to plug in regular earbuds. But they're still kind of crummy.

Like, we were talking about this before we started recording. Anytime I leave my house, if I touch the door just right, it'll disconnect my earbuds consistently. Right? And for years, like, it has to actually send the audio signal to both earbuds because it can't communicate through your body. Because Bluetooth's, like, biggest problem is dealing with the fact that water exists. Right. Like, it feels like Bluetooth has a limit, and everybody's just like, we're going to keep piling on top of the garbage pile because we don't have anything else. Yeah, I think it's gotten a bit better in that regard.

I think most of the recent earbuds and headphones I reviewed have much fewer cutouts than they used to. Like there are parts of the city where I would walk down and most stuff from like a few years ago would always drop out and constantly cut out. But now it's gotten a lot better. The Union Square Station was like an earbud killer for years. Right. That and like Brian Park in a lot of areas. I think it's one of the most intriguing things about these standard is that, you know, the one constant with every standard is that companies love to rebrand it to sell you shit to make it seem like you need their proprietary shit. to make things work, even though it's actually a standard, like HDMICC or USB versus Thunderbolt.

But here this is a situation where each of these companies is actually improving Bluetooth in some way. And it's a problem that the standard isn't good enough that they are pulling it in all these different proprietary directions. Yeah, I don't think Apple ever says that AirPods are Bluetooth headphones. I think they're over it, right? They're just AirPods. You connect them to your iPhone and they work great. pair to iCloud to your Mac and your Apple TV and whatever else, you just see Samsung trying to run the same playbook. You see Google trying to run the same playbook. And underneath at all

is the sense that, okay, Bluetooth is a connectivity protocol. And we can just run whatever codex and whatever control software over that protocol to make the connection more stable. And I do not see a ton of investment into making Bluetooth itself better for all the devices in the ecosystem to play better together. The way that you honestly see, with Wi-Fi. You actually do see it with H-DMI. Like, when we did the H-T-MI spectacular, it was because of H-D-M-2.1, and, like, VRR came out, and now all the TV support variable refresh, and it all, I would say it sort of works. Like, it works more than it doesn't in a way that Bluetooth, you know, the refrain is it'll be better next year.

Then there's all the other stuff Bluetooth is supposed to do, like run your smart home and form Bluetooth LE connections to pair Wi-Fi devices to your phone. And it's fine at that stuff. I think in that, in those cases, it's a utility, right? You bought a smart plug. You need to get it into HomeKit. You can just like wave your phone at it and it'll like pick up a Bluetooth connection and pair your smart plug. That's neat. But I fundamentally, like Bluetooth as a protocol has now been shoved into like this thing that headphone makers have to use that they would like to run away from as fast as they can or they would like to hide as much as they can. If you look back at the last 15 years of Bluetooth, and I always, you know,

I always think back to like the Motorola, like, H.T. 820, like, cinnamon bun, stereo headphones that I bought my wife, which were, like, the first Bluetooth stereo headphones. And I think about how shitty those were in so many ways. Not, like, the pairing and the audio quality, everything. You have to do the memorization of, like, how many seconds do I hold down which button on which side to make them pair properly? And like, if I look at every, like, five-year span, I want to say that audio quality and connectivity and pairing have improved substantially from, like, one-five-year block to the next. Chris, do you think audio quality has improved substantially from one-to-five-year block to the next? I think this is, like, the heart of what we're kind of talking about here is, yeah, sort of. It's easy to fall down a well, like, what matters most, like the Kodak or, like, the mastering of a song.

Like, Apple even has their own, like, custom masterings of songs. They've got this whole program called mastered for iTunes or not... iTunes anymore, but Apple Music. And so they have like their own files of songs that you don't get on Spotify or from Amazon. So like is that what sounds good or is it the Kodak or is it their headphone tuning or what? On the whole, I think they sound better than like five years ago. Like if you compare something like the Sony 1000 XM5 versus the 1000 XM3 or 2s, yeah, there's been some improvements. I mean, it's a slow incline. I mean, I've got the XM3s or the noise cancelling ones. So the 1,000 XM3s. Is that what they were called? Love the name, yeah. Would I really notice a difference, not in the noise canceling, but in just like listening to music, would I really notice a big difference on the fives? Depends how much of an audio person you are.

I think that that's part of it too. Like most people have like the first, well, not most people, but a lot of people still have their first pair of AirPods and they love those. Spoken like a true audio person, Chris. Exactly. I'm over here being like, it's CD quality, not yet. Yeah. How smart are your ears, Cranz?

That's what we're really saying. very dumb. I think there's that, but it's also just, you've got whatever the artist made, you've got music, then you've got to compress it to deliver it over a streaming service because most of them are still not lossless.

Then you've got to compress it again to send it to your headphones, and then your headphones have to do a bunch of work to reproduce the sound. And that chain is like, I agree with you, it's hard to isolate it, Chris. But it's also, this is,

this is the last thing Bluetooth is actually in charge of. Right? Like, I don't think most people want to use, like Bluetooth mice. Like, right? Like any, like, if you're a gamer, a Bluetooth mouse, it's just like not going to do it for you. Like, they could not make this protocol fast and reliable enough for that purpose. Right.

If I was like, I'm going to run my smart home on Bluetooth. Most Vurchast listeners know that is like a suicidal idea. Like, you should not do that. Right? Bluetooth in cars is whole, like today, like the dumbest thing. I was sitting downstairs. My wife got in our car and drove away and my phone. just paired to the car and the phone call I was on transferred to the car as she drove away,

right? It's still just like dumb for that stuff in like hilarious ways. Google Maps is still faking phone calls to send navigation guidance to car stereos across the country because Bluetooth is just like too stupid to communicate well in all those scenarios. That's weird. So what you're left with like the innovation appears to be in music and they are just up against hard bitrate constraints that make it impossible. to do the next thing.

And so you get, I think, Chris, you and I have laughed at this kind of like yo-yo from Apple. We're last year, they're like, yep, we're out of space and Bluetooth, wink, wink, we're to do some Apple stuff. And this year, they're like, wait, actually, special audio is a thing. We might not need the room Bluetooth is just fine because I think they know if AirPods ditched Bluetooth. That's like a nuclear move for them.

But people still need AirPods to connect to their Windows PCs or whatever. Yeah, so like what happens next to? They have some kind of like custom code or platform that they use, like, on top of the Bluetooth or like beside it. I think like maybe last year that person spoke out of turn. And then all of a sudden this year, there were rumors of the AirPods Pro 2 having some new Kodak or like lossless streaming. That didn't happen. So now all of a sudden they're like, yeah, you know what? Bluetooth works great. We love it. Good times. When the AirPods Max 2 come along and if those still use plate old Bluetooth and AAC, I'll be kind of surprised because like two generations of $500

headphones that still stick to this old very buggy standard that we've all talked about here is not the best thing. So we'll see what happens. next year. Happy holidays, everyone. Bluetooth will be better next year. We got to take a break. We'll get back with more of the Vergecast Bluetooth holiday spectacular. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn hiring pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates

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Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. We're back, so we're on to our next segment of the Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. We're going to interview Dr. Mike Foley, who was the CEO and executive director of the Bluetooth Sig, with me on that. Alex Cranes is here. Hey, Alex. Is she here? Oh.

Are you on the right microphones? No. Yeah, you're using your cars mic and speakers right now. That's what's happening. I have no idea to switch it. It's fine. The car sounds worse than ever. We're definitely going to talk to Mike Foley about why the car sounds bad.

That's coming up. Chris Welch is also here. Hey, hey, Chris. Chris, do me a favor in the spirit of the holidays. Describe to people what the Bluetooth is. So the Bluetooth Sig stands for a special interest group is a collection of all these companies from Microsoft, from Intel, from Apple, that kind of like guide the way and choose what goes where and what to focus on for each version of Bluetooth spec. I always think of the

people that run these trade groups as being politicians, more than engineers. What should people be listening for in our conversation with Dr. Foley? Yeah, it does seem like a lot of politics and a lot of just sitting down and talking and trying to just find some common balance between like what the Bluetooth Sig wants and what these companies want, be it Samsung or Apple or whoever, to kind of build out features or include them in the spec. Because we talked about, you know, like Apple and Samsung having their own kind of side things on top of Bluetooth. And so you'll hear kind of what that tussle entails about like when companies want to keep things for themselves or just bring them over to the spec in general at wide. And so it's a pretty interesting conversation. Mike's been

gone for a while. But even back when he was there, you can hear that there was a lot of fascinating stuff going on. Yeah. And honestly, the current director of the Bluetooth say couldn't do it because it's the holidays. But I would say, I said this is the Chris right after this conversation. that having the former person is actually better because he was raw. He was not shy. He was very raw. Yeah. So this is a great conversation.

Again, truly, the holiday spirit comes through in every moment of talking to Dr. Mike Foley, former CEO and executive director of the Bluetooth Sig. Let's run that interview. Dr. Michael Foley, you are the former executive director and CEO of the Bluetooth Sig. And currently the CEO and founder of IYS. Welcome to the holiday spectacular. Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

I can't tell you how excited I am to talk to you about Bluetooth in this, the holiday season. Let's start. You were at the SIG for a while from 2004 to 2012. You let it. You brought Bluetooth 3.0 to market. You let a merger with another standards body called the Wibri Forum. Tell me, in your role is the person who leads the standard. What's the structure of your day?

Do you wake up and say, I got to take over. over the wide people or they're going to come get us. Do you do politics all day? What is that job like? It's interesting. I looked at kind of my role within the SIG is kind of three prongs. One, I led the organization. You know, we had a team at the time of about 60 people that worked for the Bluetooth

Sig. So I led that group and that group did the websites, did the tools for Bluetooth, helped with members, create the specifications and publish them. So that in and of itself was a fairly big role. And then kind of the second pillar was evangelizing the technology and working with member companies on having them implement Bluetooth in their products. Because remember when I started this, there were very few products that had Bluetooth in them. So getting Bluetooth just into products and being kind of a real technology was key at that point in time.

It's not like today where 5 billion devices a year ship with Bluetooth. I mean, there was 50,000, 100,000, very small numbers at that time. So it was a different beast. And then the other one was more marketing and PR and analyst relations to promote the technology within the industry, but also to the consumer and try to convince them that the scenarios that Bluetooth was enabling was good for them, better for them so that we had create consumer demand to try to get companies to adopt the technology into them as well. So I kind of looked at it as three key areas. You led the Bluetooth SIG in what you're describing as a pivotal moment. I would agree it was a pivotal moment.

It's before phones are everywhere. It was certainly before wireless headphones were everywhere. We have a quote here from you in 2005 when you gave an interview to Engadgett where I used to work. the quote is probably next year to be able to stream music to your car stereo from your phone. I mean, that's like incredible, right? We're far beyond that. But in that time, 2005, 2006, it wasn't clear that Bluetooth was going to win, right? There was like a competitive dynamic between Bluetooth, other wireless standards with Wi-Fi for a while, which I thought was always very fascinating. And then now, with other things like thread and matter, there was a moment when Bluetooth was competitive for like smart home networking.

How did you think about where Bluetooth was in the market in 2005? and where do you think it is now? You're right. It's hard to believe back then, but there was a real question whether Bluetooth would ever be adopted or used in products. And that was highlighted by, I worked for Microsoft before I joined the Bluetooth SIG. And one of the first things I did was an analyst who were to get some feedback on where analysts thought the technology and tried to convince them where it was going was a good idea and the like. And the first call I had with an analyst, his first question was, you know, how stupid are you? You left a great job at Microsoft to run this technology that will be dead in a year.

And so that made me think a little bit, well, maybe I'm not that smart. You know, maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But the scenarios that Bluetooth was enabling, I thought were compelling, and so did many other people. So convincing, you know, companies to adopt those and things was very important. And Bluetooth had, you know, some technical features, some other features that made it appealing for those scenarios and better than the other technologies for the initial scenarios that Bluetooth was used. You mentioned Wi-Fi. And Wi-Fi is, you know, at the time, excellent and still, excellent networking technology, and it's used for other things now as well. But, you know, home routers and laptops, networking was its killer scenario, if you will. And at least at the time, the 2004, five, six time frame, it really wasn't appropriate for, you know, the ear piece, the headset that you mentioned purely because of power requirements, latency as well, but primarily power and cost.

And so Bluetooth really was a good technology for those initial scenarios. And then, of course, we were able to keep adapting it and tweaking it for other use cases. And now today, which this kind of second wave of scenarios really started with Bluetooth 4, Bluetooth low energy, which was the last spec that came out while I was running the organization. And that's really enabled Bluetooth to go into the health and fitness. devices, the sensors, and just all sorts of new devices that really even in the 2004-2005 time frame, even Bluetooth wasn't properly suited for at that point because it wasn't low enough energy for these sensor-type devices. So, you know, once we got a foothold into the market,

we were able to expand and improve the technology for more and more use cases. Tell me what that sales pitch was like. You go into Apple or Samsung or Dell or whatever. They're evaluating their range of standards to support. So do you have like a PowerPoint deck where there, do you do bribes under the table? What does that sales job look like? You take them golfing? I did that, yes.

Because I'm a golfer as well. So there were some rounds of golf involved. But more times you would. You'd go meet with companies. And yes, you'd have a PowerPoint deck that you would present, you know, the numbers, the facts as you saw them and lots of conversations with them and going to typically one meeting and one, you know, PowerPoint deck wouldn't be enough to close the deal. So there was a journey and they developed relationships and friendships with these, you know, people that are

building the products and go from there. One meeting that stands out vividly with that was as going into Sony and trying to convince their TV team to. to use Bluetooth for your remote control. At that time, they were mainly IR-based, but Sony was promoter or a proponent of using a different RF technology for the remote control. So it wasn't a very easy cell or meeting and stuff, but you start that way and go from there,

and now Bluetooth is used in the vast majority of TV remote controls. It didn't happen overnight, but over time and continuing. And, you know, they told me the couple of things that were really needed in the spec before they could use them in a TV remote. So then you fix the spec to address those issues. And, you know, eventually it gets used there. Yeah, if you're going to talk about Sony and Bluetooth, I got to throw to Chris here so we can talk about some codec stuff, Chris. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I guess you were kind of gone before they came out with LDAQ and the whole spec to raise the bit rates.

but I guess like what part of that did you play? Did you see it coming? And like how do you feel now about like where things are headed? You've got Samsung, their earbuds do like 24-bit audio now. Like what's the ceiling for what is possible with the Bluetooth audio in your mind? Oh, I mean, pretty much the audio is migrating towards being run over the low energy channel rather than the, you know, a traditional Bluetooth channel. And a couple of, I think, really exciting things where the specs were just updated for. that one running over low audio to be able to broadcast a stereo stream to multiple headphones.

I think, you know, for sharing music between people or, you know, in a bar type environment where they have three games on. You can put your headphone onto whichever games, you know, you want to listen to to, hear that audio stream. And so I think there's a lot of cool things where, you know, Bluetooth audio is going to and being able to, and being able to have, though, a basic functionality that allows interoperability between products from different manufacturers, but then also enable manufacturers if they want to put improvements on top of that, whether, you know, it's a different Kodak or different bit rates, things like that, to enable, you know, their own products or products with their partners to work better. I think that's a positive, you know, that you keep the interoperability so you can use

products from different manufacturers, but manufacturers are able to innovate on top of that as well and add their own, you know, special sauce, if you will, to make what they believe is even improved products. And I think that's great. I think the technology should enable that. Wait, is that the political answer or is, do you believe that? Because I don't. I just to be clear, I do not, like, that is Microsoft doing embrace, extend, extinguish, right? Where Apple uses, I'm just pick on Apple because everybody knows AirPods, but I know Samsung wants to do this, and I know Google wants to do this. Apple gets used to the AirPods.

They leverage Bluetooth the spec. They build proprietary extensions that no one else can access. Eventually, everyone loves AirPods. And then they leave the spec behind, and they leave everyone else high and dry. And I can pick on Apple, but Microsoft invented this playbook. It was called Embrace Extinguished with the web. Do you believe that that outcome can be managed by the Bluetooth Sig or you can avoid it? Or is that just the dynamic of the tech and?

industry. Well, I, you know, when I was involved with the SIG, you would see some of that, and a lot of the initial innovation was done that way, and then it would be rolled back into the specification. And now, you know, I can't speak for Apple with what they've done with some of their products and stuff if they'd ever want to roll that back into the spec. But back in my day, when I was there, things like usability to make, you know, one of the early issues with Bluetooth was nobody could figure out how to pair devices and get them to work together. Let me tell you, that's not just an early issue. Yeah, fair enough, but it is better now than it was that.

And there was a major push in a whole spec, you know, its hallmarked feature was a secure simple pairing, which made pairing easier. and that introduced a lot of the ways you pair today with it just works and things like that. And a lot of that spec came from companies that, you know, had already been working to improve the pairing experience because, you know, they saw the flaws in it at the time. And those were rolled back into the spec. Now, some of the things that have done since then to enhance pairing hasn't been rolled back into the spec yet. whether that ever will or not. I'm not close enough to the Bluetooth organization now

to know if there's an appetite from members to do that or not. But I think it can work, and I don't believe that all companies, when they're extending a spec or improving upon it, you know, are trying to wipe out the competition. Sure, they're trying to win and have the best products out there. If the spec is so complete, if you will,

then it doesn't allow for that innovation. And that was something we discussed a lot with each spec is where you draw that line. You know, how much is in the spec and how much is company, you know, company's innovation on top of that. And that was debated, you know, with every spec all the time. And again, I'm not in those meetings today, but I would assume that is still a major conversation piece is how much you put in the spec and how much you lead for company innovation. Can you kind of walk us through how you have those conversations where you want to roll it back? Well, that may sound like an absurd thing to do, but maybe I was just shameless. I would do that all the time.

And it worked. That's awesome. That didn't bother me at all. Well, sometimes it works. Sometimes it didn't. But, you know, what's the old saying, the worst they can do is say no. You know, and I'm no worse off than I was before having the conversation. or asking. And a lot of times also, though, you would go and speak not only to Apple,

but also companies that were building the products to work with the Apple products, because they would be more motivated to want that stuff standardized so those features could also work with Android phones or, you know, other products depending on what they were making. And they, you know, would then have those conversations with Apple as well, that, you know, we had really like to see this feature, that feature rolled into the standard. And, you know, obviously those companies would have a lot of pull as well. So when you have companies like Apple who are pretty vertically integrated now and they make the iPhones, they make the AirPods and everything else, that kind of disincentivizes them from like working with the standard more closely because, yeah, they can just

say go kick rocks, Jabra. Well, yeah, any company that's in that situation, and the Samsung's of the world, there's a lot of companies that are in that position. So you're using Apple as an example, not trying to pick on them, I don't think. What you're saying is very true, but there's also the chip manufacturer,

the Qualcomms of the world, that want to be able to create their silicon and have it work in products, to all their customers, not just Apple or Samsung or whomever and not have to do special, you know, spins for the one company. Obviously, you know, a company like Apple or Samsung, they will, you know, but they'd prefer to be able to have that be as versatile as possible. So even when a company has their complete vertical solution, I forget exactly how you phrased it, you know, creates their own ecosystem.

There's still different layers in it. As I said, like the chip manufacturers and other people that are motivated to standardize some of this stuff as well. When you talked about stuff being in the standard and some stuff being built on top of it and there's always a debate about where the line is, who's in that debate? Who gets to be in those rooms? Are you all around a whiteboard drawing lines at different heights and like angrily pointing at them?

Like, who's in the room and what does that debate actually sound like? So the Bluetooth specifications are created by members, and there's work groups where various members that are interested in that use case or that spec would participate in. So there's the radio work group, work group for hands free in the car, work group, you know, for the low energy audio, just everything that comes out of Bluetooth, there's a work group involved in member companies that have. expertise in opinion for lack of the different word of how that should be implemented are sitting in the room. And they'll debate that and they'll contribute to the spec. And then also at the end of the day, it's the board of directors that adopts the specification. And that's when it gets published and companies can start building products based on it. And so the board of directors sets the goals for the specification. These are the scenarios we want to enable. These are the new features we

want to enable stuff like that. And then it goes to the work group. And then when it's done, it comes back to the board of directors to sign off on. So I mean, that's a way 10,000 level oversimplification of how it's done. But those are the two main groups that are kind of around that table, if you will, for what goes in the spec and what doesn't go in the spec and where that line is drawn. So you've got the members, you've got the board of directors. They're talking on different parts of the spec. Just as a consumer, somebody who experiences Bluetooth every day, is there a part where you're like, all right, the world's great consumer technology and computer companies are going to implement our spec? We don't have to worry about them. The car companies

are now going to put Bluetooth radios in their cars. And that's a little, dicey and maybe we should go babysit them a little bit. Because that's where the breakdown is, right, in the actual execution and the implementation of the standard. And some companies historically very good at it, some gigantic category of companies, historically very bad at it. How do you make sure that consumer experience stays good? Well, that's a difficult one because the consumer experience isn't in the specification itself. And that actually with Bluetooth anyway is very entrenched within the original rules of the organization and how it was formed that the user experience not be in the specification, that that's something that.

Really? Yes, that the companies can do on their own. Why is that? When Bluetooth formed, it was a lot of big companies coming together to do this. specification and all of them had very strong opinions on what the user interface should look like and how it should be. And, you know, one of the things that when I first started working with Bluetooth, I worked for Microsoft and I was on the board of directors. I chaired the board of directors and things like that. And I negotiated, there was part of the team that negotiated the

deal for Microsoft to join the Bluetooth Sig. And back in Redmond in the meetings, you know, One direction that I received very loud and clearly is, you know, some group of other companies is not going to tell us what the user interface in Windows is. And, you know, at one time when I went to Erickson, you know, this was 99,000 time frame. So at that time, Erickson was a very big cell phone manufacturer. And I had what I thought was a great idea for how Bluetooth should be in the phone and how it should implement with Windows. and saw them with their head UI guy for phones and give him this idea. And he kind of stares blankly at me. And I said, come on, it couldn't take you more than a week to implement this feature.

And he said, no, it'll be six months because it'll take five and a half months for you to convince me to do it. And then two weeks for me to do it. So all these companies had very strong impressions of how the UI on the device, that they made and their experts at should work. And, you know, some kid from another company shouldn't come and tell them how it should be. And, you know, whenever I get Microsoft, they wouldn't allow it. Erickson would a, Nokia sure as heck wouldn't allow it. And so, you know, none of the companies involved back then would allow that.

And so to kind of roll back to your question, though, one of the things we did do is we had put out, guidelines. And the Bluetooth Sig, you mentioned the car scenario. One of the things we did is we did a consumer focus groups and brought consumers, regular people that may or may not have ever used Bluetooth and stuck them in a car and stuck them in, you know, many, many different types of cars, not always the same person, but, you know, different people in different cars and had them try to pair a phone with the car. And sometimes, as you said, it went very smoothly. Sometimes it didn't, but there are some very clear things that consumers expected and kind of wanted to follow the flow through and some that the cars did that

they weren't expecting at all. And so we were able to put that into a paper and give some guidelines and share that with all the car manufacturers that were members. And that helped some. You know, as you said, they're still not all perfect in things. But I do think it. it's better than when cars first started implementing Bluetooth. So you have a PhD or an engineer by training. You used to work on the actual wireless standards at Microsoft. Every time I talk to someone in your position or someone who's been in your position as standards body, I come away thinking, oh, this is a politics job.

This person had to become a politician because what you're describing is less engineering and way more politics. Is that how you see it that this is a political job? Well, there's definitely that part of it. And you're a salesman as well, no doubt about that. But I think, at least in my own experience, having the technical background enabled me to speak to the people that were making the specifications. You know, at the radio level, I understood that level. At the upper layers, I understood that level. And I think at least with Bluetooth and my personal experience, that helped a lot.

with the specifications but as you said with talking with members and press and analyst and stuff uh i didn't use that part of my background nearly as much i want to let Alex and Chris ask some questions to wrap us up but here's my my final question i look at the state of Bluetooth today and it can do a lot of things it has more capabilities than ever but it's narrowed to the audio use case in almost every circumstance, right? Like AirPods and galaxy buds and pixel buds are all great and they have all these capabilities and that's great. And pairing with your car is great. And spatial audio is whatever it is. But the universe of other things that Bluetooth could do has been supplanted by other lower power technologies, has been supplanted by things like Wi-Fi,

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi work together now in many cases. Do you see that nearing or am I missing something big? Well, audio was the original killer use case, and it went from voice audio to stereo audio, and now it's going stereo audio over the low-energy channel. And so audio has been, and I think will continue to be a major, major feature or part of what Bluetooth is and enables. I do think, though, in a lot of other devices like the medical, the fitness and things like that, Bluetooth can still be adopted and used there as well. Having the connection to pretty much every smartphone out there is still a big advantage for those other type of use cases and makes some other technologies, at least for the consumer side, harder to enter because you don't have that cell phone connectivity. Now in the industrial world and things like that, where you're doing the entire vertical, you know, in high.

house, if you will, if you're doing automation on a manufacturing floor, you know, that cell phone connection may not be as important because you'll just create your own basically access point or connectivity point for whatever technology you're using. So you use the best technology that's fit for that particular job. So I think that's a harder nut, if you will, for Bluetooth to crack than the more consumer ones where the phone is such a vital component in it. So I've been at the verge for a while, and I feel like there was a period a few years ago where we often wrote about BLE, low energy, and these beacons, and this notion that you would like walk into a store and the app for like Walmart or Target

would like guide you to the aisle or shelf where the thing you wanted was. And that never really happened. So do you think like there are times where the tech industry just gets maybe too ambitious with Bluetooth and uses it in ways that sound nice in concept, but in practice or a hassle or not really what it's meant for when it comes down to it? Well, you're right, the low energy beacons. There's a lot of hype around those for a while. And it might have been one of those.

If you build it, they will come type of things. But not as many people came as some people had hoped. You know, even back at the beginning, I was talking about the scenarios that you're enabling. You know, I tested with Bluetooth low energy beacons around a target. And, you know, it'll show you where the item is and map you to it and stuff. But, you know, I don't really know how compelling that is. You know, most people can walk around the target and find this stuff. And part of walking around the target is the journey that people enjoy when they're shopping.

You know, so pulling out your phone and having to do all of that, yeah, maybe has some value, but I don't know if it's really a killer type scenario. So the scenarios have to be good and consumers have to, you know, want them and be willing to use them where the Beacon scenario might not have been there. Now, if you easily push good coupons to them and things like that and it saved them some money, then people might be more inclined to use that sort of application. What element of Bluetooth that you worked on was like just the part you really, really are super proud of? And like, you will probably bring up in a conversation with people who know nothing about Bluetooth. Well, it was mentioned earlier about how Bluetooth and Wibri came together. And that turned into Bluetooth low energy in the 4.0 spec.

And that whole process and going through and working out the deal for that and getting the specification done, you know, that was really something. And that really set the foundation for what Bluetooth is and became for this last decade, you know, for the next 10 years after that was done. So, you know, that was very good, very proud of that and how that's turned out. Were you like, I got to take these wide guys? No, no, no, no. They actually believed that the Bluetooth SIG was probably the best way to get the technology out there as well, rather than recreating everything that the Bluetooth SIG had. Because people, I don't think, realize,

and the consumer shouldn't have to realize this. But creating a standard like that and getting the technology out there takes a lot of time, energy, money, resources, infrastructure, just all these things. And duplicating that for each technology is very wasteful in the industry. And so being able to bring those two together, you know, saved companies. A lot of money, I think made it easier for the consumer when the actual low energy came out

because it got put into phones right away because people made dual mode chipsets right away. And so it was definitely a win-win for both organizations, for the consumer, for the members, etc. So no, it wasn't like you're going out and saying, you know, we have to just take over these guys. It's a nice low-power wireless spec you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to. Yep, exactly. All right, let's wrap it up here. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining us on the Vurchase, Bluetooth holiday spectacular.

It would be a crime if I didn't ask this or listeners would kill me. The joke we've had that a lot of folks, a lot of people who report on consumer technology have for years on Bluetooth is that Bluetooth will be better next year. And that has just always been the answer for a decade plus of Bluetooth. In the spirit of the holidays, will Bluetooth be better next year? Maybe. I don't know. It's pretty damn good now. And it will continue to do more things. That's amazing.

Mike, thank you so much for joining the Vurchase Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. This is great. All right, thanks. And with that, the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular comes to a close. Children are sleeping. Our headsets are charging. And Bluetooth, well, honestly, we don't know if Bluetooth will be better next year,

which we'll just have to try again. Thank you for joining us on the Vergecast Bluetooth holiday spectacular. We enjoyed having you. I hope you have an excellent holiday season. There's lots of coverage of Bluetooth on theverge.com. There's lots of coverage of Bluetooth in all of our hearts. You can follow us on the website at theverge.com. We're thinking about what other social platforms you can follow us on.

But Theverge.com right now is pretty good. So check out Theverge.com. We're on it. We're writing about Bluetooth every day. We're writing about the holidays. The Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, even just some Bluetooth tips and tricks, you can always email Vergecast at theverge.com. And if you have questions, call the hotline. 866 Verge 1-1. Send us all your big thoughts, concerns, and questions about the world of tech. That's it for the Vergecast in 2022. Happy holidays, and we'll see you at CES 2023. Devices now disconnected.