What a load of bollocks. Bluetooth works for me as advertized with MacOSX and a t68i; it lets me use GPRS on the train or wherever I want it, it is reliable. Hit 'connect' and you are... guess what.. connected. As long as your phone is somehwere in a pocked or in your back nearby. It just works. Same for iSync - iSync simply works; hit sync and it syncs with the phone and the palm. And if I click 'dial' in my addressbook on my desktop; the phone dials. If an SMS comes in; a window pops on the screen; where I can type a reply. When I hit 'send'... it get send. What -more- is there to want. Same for the audio. What -more- do you want ?!

From the article: <I>We must have encrypted IPv6 as a basic capability in order to make untethered connectivity simple enough to work.</>

Where the hell did that come from? I don't effing care if the protocol is encrypted or not, and I certainly don't need IPV6 protocols to talk to devices. If I need security, I'll encrypt the data first, rather than trust the hardware to do it for me.

Edited by author 11-14-2002 04:16 AM
I don't think you could find a much clearer example of the American "not invented here" syndrome around wireless that the Register described so well last week.
Bluetooth has been working great for me with a Mac, a T68 and a Tungsten T. In fact any pain I had in the process was nothing to do with BT but everything to do with the phone being unsupported by my Canadian provider at the time. Most of the problems described in the Globe article seem to be about crappy Windows support, not about BT itself.

For some things bluetooth works well.

For other things, bluetooth fucking blows.

I absolutely love it when my hub detects a changed code on the keyboard, and locks my keyboard out for 3 minutes.(which in reality seems like waiting 3 minutes, then rebooting) Or when my mouse gets stuck in bluetooth mode, and simply doesn't work as a usb mouse anymore.