Comment by lxgr
2 years ago
Infrared ports are basically that!
They were quite popular before Bluetooth (Bluetooth file transfers are actually a different physical layer for the same protocol called OBEX) and quite ironically interoperable across phone and PDA manufacturers, as far as I remember.
It’s extremely sad that we’ve gone from being able to send a photo or business card across manufacturers to needing (incredibly clever!) contortions like this, on vastly more powerful hardware that can literally talk to satellites and run local LLMs.
IrDA. I remember having it on laptops, palmtops, printers and such but I don’t think I ever actually used it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_Data_Association
Early smartphones had it too, which was nice as then you could use them as universal remotes in a pinch.
You could walk up to a random HP printer and print from your palm pilot. Handy while traveling.
The original iMac had it, but it was dropped in the first refresh
TIL OBEX is older than Bluetooth.