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Deelron

macrumors regular
Jan 30, 2009
235
113
Probably not. Apple may limit Handoff to built-in bluetooth only.

There's already a precedent with PowerNap: it only works with MBAs and rMBPs that have always shipped with factory-installed SSDs. There's technically nothing preventing my 2009 MBP 13" with Samsung SSD from having PowerNap (since its firmware already supports Dark Wake mode),

Not that it matters a ton but with 10.9 it works with newer desktop models as well, even without SSDs.

OSX: About Power Nap
 

Kariya

macrumors 68000
Nov 3, 2010
1,820
10
Reinforcing that this is a business decision :)

Its not a business decision its a technical one. Did you read the article? :)

BT 4.0 LE is a necessity

BT 3.0 and WiFi consume more power

It's more beneficial for Apple if you use all the stuff they have to offer (shocking i know), so why on earth would they artificially limit you from doing so. If Apple was really hung up about you buying new toys they wouldn't be allowing you to install Yosemite on a 7yr old computer and iOS 8 on a 3yr old phone.

You're cynicism is unfounded, outside of making you 'feel better' about lagging behind.
 

fishkorp

macrumors 68030
Apr 10, 2006
2,536
650
Ellicott City, MD
I can confirm it doesn't work with my 3rd party dongle that does have BT LE (which works with apps like Knock to Unlock and Notifyr)
 

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RMo

macrumors 65816
Aug 7, 2007
1,254
281
Iowa, USA
Apple could make hand off with all devices if they used wifi.
Bluetooth is so inefficient!

No. The "LE" in Bluetooth LE stands for "low energy." As others have pointed out, it's specifically designed to be efficient, and it is quite conservative with power. (Lockitron uses it, for example. Its BLE is constantly on. Meanwhile, the WiFi can only turn on every so often because it would drain the batteries otherwise. Belkin WeMo also uses WiFi. All of their devices require wall power, no batteries. I think you can see a trend here.)

That being said, I'm intrigued by the comment about whether it will work with third-party Bluetooth adapters. I have the IOGEAR GBU521 which is generally reported to be Mac compatible (it's one of few recommended for Hackintoshes) and supports BLE. I'm using it on a PC now but would move it to my late 2008 aluminum MacBook if it meant Hand Off would work with it. BLE is BLE, so I don't see why it wouldn't--but I guess you never know. I hope it does so I can hold of on buying a new Mac juuuust a little longer. :)
 

kappaknight

macrumors 68000
Mar 5, 2009
1,595
91
Atlanta, GA
It does...AirDrop introduced with OS X 10.7 require WiFi card with WiFi Direct support... Bunch of Mac were not supported, for example MacBook before late 2008 model. There was a terminal hack enabling AirDrop and it worked beautifully. I even enabled on my Hackintosh....

With that said, the ones who know how to hack to get it to work, can probably fix it no matter what. The people who don't know how to hack will probably have problems just because.
 

gotluck

macrumors 603
Dec 8, 2011
5,712
1,204
East Central Florida
Its not a business decision its a technical one. Did you read the article? :)

BT 4.0 LE is a necessity

BT 3.0 and WiFi consume more power

It's more beneficial for Apple if you use all the stuff they have to offer (shocking i know), so why on earth would they artificially limit you from doing so. If Apple was really hung up about you buying new toys they wouldn't be allowing you to install Yosemite on a 7yr old computer and iOS 8 on a 3yr old phone.

You're cynicism is unfounded, outside of making you 'feel better' about lagging behind.

Lol wifi consumes too much power huh? I'd wager a large majority of users never turn it off. A subset of continuity features are even reported to use wifi ie. SMS handoff

I don think you read my other posts...
 

jcaro

macrumors newbie
Jun 17, 2014
2
0
I don't see any of those settings on my Late 2012 Mac Mini.

Nothing about Bluetooth LE
Nothing about Continuity
Nothing about Airdrop

BT ver 4.2.4f1 13674
Chipset 20702B0
Firmware v79 c8653

What gives???


John
 

FieldingMellish

Suspended
Jun 20, 2010
2,440
3,108
I vividly remember how horrified I was to see my advanced layout in Pages on the Mac crumble when seen in Pages in the iPhone. Handoff will allow me to relive that nightmare over and over automatically.
 

NT1440

macrumors G5
May 18, 2008
14,643
20,879
Looks like December is finally the time to pull the trigger on a new MBP :)

My 2009 is still chugging along, gonna pop in an SSD and pass it on to a friend.
 

arn

macrumors god
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,363
5,795
I don't see any of those settings on my Late 2012 Mac Mini.

Nothing about Bluetooth LE
Nothing about Continuity
Nothing about Airdrop

BT ver 4.2.4f1 13674
Chipset 20702B0
Firmware v79 c8653

What gives???


John

You have to be on Yosemite Beta 2.

arn
 

Kariya

macrumors 68000
Nov 3, 2010
1,820
10
Lol wifi consumes too much power huh? I'd wager a large majority of users never turn it off. A subset of continuity features are even reported to use wifi ie. SMS handoff

I don think you read my other posts...

Nor did you read mine. I said WiFi and BT 3.0 consume more power (than LE) not "too much power". Plus they lack the necessary profiles.

And the subset of features that use WiFi require the device to be plugged in, otherwise it won't work. Because WiFi is automatically turned off.

Hmm...it makes you wonder why WiFi is automatically turned off if the device isn't plugged in...

/s
 
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longofest

Editor emeritus
Jul 10, 2003
2,924
1,682
Falls Church, VA
Apple could make hand off with all devices if they used wifi.
Bluetooth is so inefficient!

Bluetooth 4.0 LE is incredibly efficient! Much more efficient than WiFi.

I figured this was happening when i saw the keynote. They are using Bluetooth LE and a form of the proximity profile to identify when a device comes close. You can't necessarily do this over WiFi because your devices may be on different WiFi networks, whereas bluetooth is peer to peer and can facilitate the handoff.
 

Richdmoore

macrumors 68000
Jul 24, 2007
1,956
355
Troutdale, OR
I can confirm it doesn't work with my 3rd party dongle that does have BT LE (which works with apps like Knock to Unlock and Notifyr)

Thanks for testing.

I purchased the iogear bluetooth dongle with the hopes that I could use it to upgrade the bluetooth in my 2011 iMac, but it is what it is.

Hopefully apple will patch it to allow us to use a supported external bluetooth, or a third party hack will be developed.
 

chekz0414

macrumors 6502a
Jul 3, 2011
770
99
FL
I wonder if just replacing the 2011 MBP Card with a 2012 MBP LE Card would work? That is an actual Hardware Upgrade that OS X should recognize right? Kind of like putting an SSD in a 2011 model should enable PowerNap?
 

ulyssesric

macrumors 6502
Oct 7, 2006
250
204
People watched too much Sci-Fi movie

Wait a minute... WHO said that Handoff "must" rely on Bluetooth LE ? They didn't say any sentence with the word "Bluetooth" in the whole keynote speech! Besides, Craig had showed a photo that you can leave you phone in other room while talking on you Mac !

The whole idea of Handoff can be achieved gracefully with Bonjour over WiFi. The iCloud binding is enough for identification. They may add Bluetooth ability for faster response, but it's not a "must-have" component in the whole scenery.

Someone may argue that Handoff would apply proximation sensing. But people don't understand: proximation is NOT equal to Bluetooth LE.

Bluetooth LE and classic Bluetooth are completely two different technologies. Bluetooth LE is focused on low power / low speed communication. It has implemented strong forward error correction encodings over extra redundant symbols, so that you can still get the message when the SNR is extremely poor. That's useful for applications in busy channels, or OVER LONG RANGES. By theory, Bluetooth LE with default transmission power could cover the range about 100 ft., which is even longer than a non-amplified WiFi station, and that makes "proximation" meaningless.

Bluetooth LE COULD be used for proximation sensing, but that needs lots of fine-tune works on antenna gain, antenna angle and transmission power; that's exactly what they do with iBeacon. It's not something can be done by none experienced uses.

Besides, the whole "LE" thing had became a myth. The so call "Low Power" is a comparative phrase. Bluetooth consumes much less power than GPRS/3G during transmission, but it consumes approximately similar power (typically 20 to 40 milliamps) while listening comparing to WiFi. The superior property of Bluetooth is its light weight -- the processor and baseband circuit can be rapidly switched between sleep and active mode in few hundreds microseconds, which makes it an ideal solution for presence detection -- and wake up the other components and "trigger" actions, for example, performing Bonjour discovering over WiFi.

In other word, Bluetooth LE is good for fast pairing; but it's NOT necessary. And it can NOT provide accurate positioning information, unless you're an RF expert.

If proximation is required in an application, classic Bluetooth is far more accurate and much easier to setup.
 
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Lunfai

macrumors 68000
Nov 21, 2010
1,566
519
Sheffield
Wait a minute... WHO said that Handoff "must" rely on Bluetooth LE ? They didn't say any sentence with the word "Bluetooth" in the whole keynote speech! Besides, Craig had showed a photo that you can leave you phone in other room while talking on you Mac !

The whole idea of Handoff can be achieved gracefully with Bonjour over WiFi. The iCloud binding is enough for identification. They may add Bluetooth ability for faster response, but it's not a "must-have" component in the whole scenery.

Someone may argue that Handoff would apply proximation sensing. But people don't understand: proximation is NOT equal to Bluetooth LE.

Bluetooth LE and classic Bluetooth are completely two different technologies. Bluetooth LE is focused on low power / low speed communication. It has implemented strong forward error correction encodings over extra redundant symbols, so that you can still get the message when the SNR is extremely poor. That's useful for applications in busy channels, or OVER LONG RANGES.

By theory, Bluetooth LE with default transmission power could cover the range about 100 ft., which is even longer than a non-amplified WiFi station, and that makes "proximation" meaningless.

Bluetooth LE COULD be used for proximation sensing, but that needs lots of fine-tune works on antenna gain, antenna angle and transmission power; that's exactly what they do with iBeacon. It's not something can be done by none experienced uses.

In other word, Bluetooth LE is ideal for "presence detection" since it use less energy, which is good for fast pairing; but it can NOT provide accurate positioning information, unless you're an RF expert.

If proximation is required in an application, classic Bluetooth is far more accurate and much easier to setup.

To be fair I used it on the other side of the room with Bluetooth on and it picked it up. I can see the battery and signal status when I go into the wifi menu to indicate that I can connect to personal hotspot.
 

EwanMcTeagle

macrumors 6502
Mar 26, 2012
261
43
Lodz, Poland
I see they also banned AirDrop with my Mac? Even though MBP 2011 models were the first with AirDrop, and they support AirPlay...Why couldn't Continuity and Handoff work via AirPlay technology (since that doesn't require Wi-Fi anymore)...or even Wi-Fi like many have stated. I wasn't even thinking about upgrading my Mac, and now I definitely need to think about it.

And that's basically what they want. I'm also not happy that my my 2011 MBP won't support that (but then again, let's wait and see for sure), but still, you can't really complain when you're getting the latest OSX for free and your 2-3 y old hardware doesn't get all the features. I mean, why should it? As much as I would prefer to have all the latest tweaks Apple rolls out, I'm not gonna blame Apple for not giving them away to the masses - I mean they want to sell their stuff. Ergo new stuff has to have some advantage over older products. And still, Apple's rather generous with old product's support on the software side. And as someone has said, maybe there'll be some Terminal trick to activate it on oleo machines as it is with AirDrop over Ethernet - and that's one weird limitation. Guess that apart from bringing nice features for free, Apple also loves to dwell in those small things that just pi%% you off:)
 

cashxx

macrumors member
Sep 14, 2010
67
111
I was wondering the same thing. A quick search on Amazon showed several Bluetooth 4.0 adapters but the first few I check say they are NOT Mac compatible. Neither is the one you linked - it only mentions Windows support.

http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Blueto...03065920&sr=1-1&keywords=iogear+bluetooth+4.0

But seeing above that third party isn't working! Nice!

I'd recommend everyone to put in an enhancement request at bugreport.apple.com and send a "quick" one line message to Tim Cook tcook@apple.com.

I don't see why it just has to be Bluetooth LE. Yea its nice if you have it because its low power, but my laptop is always plugged in and would be very handy options and Bluetooth should work just fine or even wifi. Give the option to use them atleast if you don't have the LE version of Bluetooth.
 
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Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
Bluetooth LE uses very little energy that users can afford to leave on at all times. WiFi uses more power and so does older versions of Bluetooth.

You aren't going to need it to be on all the time. Besides, if it is going over BT, the devices can't be too far away from each other anyway. Again, the BT requirement makes no sense. They could "push" the handoff same as any other notification. I can't see sending any substantial amount of data over BT anyways.
 

hlfway2anywhere

Cancelled
Jul 15, 2006
1,544
2,338
If this was supported over wifi and classic bluetooth, everyone would be whining about the battery life of their iDevices. Apple made the right decision here.
 

Paulshaqz

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2009
905
174
testing on my iPhone 5 with 2009 mbp here and nothing pretty bummed out that the fact it not working my only hope is beta 3 and the official release. other wise pretty soon it's gonna be time for an upgrade.
 

dempson

macrumors regular
Jun 10, 2007
117
14
Wellington, New Zealand
Do both the iPhone and Mac have to have Bluetooth LE? I know my iPhone 4 doesn't have BT LE

If a feature requires Bluetooth LE then both devices would need to support it.

Your iPhone 4 won't be able to upgrade to iOS 8, so it won't be able to use the new features anyway. The minimum supported models for iOS 8 are iPhone 4S, iPad 2, iPad mini and iPod Touch (5th generation).

Of those, the iPad 2 won't support some new features because it only has Bluetooth 2.1. In iOS 7 it already missed out on AirDrop.
 
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