Comment by hapticmonkey
2 months ago
I don't know much about this, but does "proximity pairing" use some open standard API that's part of the bluetooth spec? Are there any examples of other devices using something like this?
Part of the appeal of Airpods is how seamless they are to pair and share between devices. The UX of bluetooth headphones pairing and device switching before Airpods came along seemed atrocious.
Is this a case of Apple arbitrarily locking out third parties, or is a case of Apple doing the work to get something to work nicely and now being forced to give competition access?
I don't know how proximity pairing works in Apple land. My wife uses Apple devices.
But between my Android phone and my contractor issued Windows laptop, the $20 headphone I use just works. It connects to both of them because of multi-pairing. If one of the devices is playing, say, a Youtube video, the other doesn't take over the sound even if I start playing music there. And if I pause the Youtube video in one device, the other is free to play sounds.
It's seamless and intuitive.
I should try also pairing to my Linux workstation. If that works too I would be impressed.