AirPods are fantastic little devices.
They sound amazing, they integrate with all your devices, and they’re super easy to use.
That might all be possibleif and when Apple ditches Bluetooth.
Alejandro Luengo / Unsplash
He then hinted that there’s already something in the works.
That’s because audio has to send a lot more data over the air than a mouse.
More than Bluetooth can handle.
Akhil Yerabati / Unsplash
Its kind of like ZIP files, only for audio.
This has two side effects.
One is that audio quality suffersalthough modern codecs (compression/decompression methods) do a great job.
The other is this compression operation takes time, introducing a delay.
Thats why keyboard taps feel instant, whereas audio has a slight delay.
With general listening, its no big dealonce the music starts, you dont notice.
Ultra-Wideband radio can solve all of this and more.
The HomePod mini has an U1, too, as does the Apple Watch Series 6 and the AirTag.
And according to technical investigatorsMax Tech, it improves on Bluetooth in the following ways.
Bluetooth’s maximum transfer speed is around two megabits per second.
Apple’s lossless audio codec,which doesn’t yet work with AirPods, requires 9.2 megabits.
That’s where its name comes from.
That’s not to say Apple will dump Bluetooth entirelyjust for AirPods, and probably also HomePods.
Bluetooth is worth keeping around for all the other useful jobs it can doand it’s essentially free.
“Bluetooth modules are small and cheap,” tech journalist and Apple userJohn Brownlees told Lifewire via tweet.
The Whole Enchilada
This pattern is becoming familiar.
Apple can do this because it controls all the hardware and software.
If Bose shipped UWB earpods, nobody would care because no phones can use them.
