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Apple Archive

A Better Portable Solution: Bluetooth Instead of Wires

- 2004.05.10

Most computer users leave their peripherals at their desk. They don't take their speakers, iPod dock, PDA cradle, memory card reader, and whatever other peripherals they've got along with them when they leave the desk.

If you've got a laptop, that collection of peripherals usually sits there on your desk, disconnected, doing nothing, and looking pretty ridiculous with cables all over the place.

What if you need to connect your PDA while you're using your laptop out in the field? You're out of luck, unless you've thought to bring the cradle or cable needed to connect it to your laptop.

The simple solution is to bring all of those peripherals with you, but then you've got to have a computer bag bigger than Russia to hold all the things you might need.

And then there are all the cables that you've got to deal with. It's not just a power adapter for the computer anymore, but ethernet cables, printer cables, power cables for other devices, USB cables for digital camera, FireWire cables - the list seems endless. Furthermore, cables often get tangled together in your computer bag. Anyone who has had to do it knows that untangling cables isn't exactly fun.

There are also the "interesting looks" that you get when you want to transfer a Cure album from your computer to your iPod. Out come the long FireWire cable and the iPod, presuming you can find both in your bag of cables. People watch you curiously as you spend 10 minutes looking for the cable, just 2 minutes actually transferring the album, and another 5 minutes rewrapping the cable and putting it back in your bag (not like it stays wrapped anyway).

What can eliminate printer, PDA, MP3 player, and digital camera cables? Perhaps Bluetooth will. Since many high-end PDAs, mobile phones, and printers already have the Bluetooth capability, all you have to do is put the device near you Bluetooth-equipped computer . . . and it works.

What could be better than that?

Unfortunately, most of the devices in use aren't Bluetooth-equipped, and Apple laptops made before 2002 are not Bluetooth-enabled. You can buy a USB Bluetooth adapter for older Macs with USB ports, but PDAs and MP3 players must have it built in.

My old Handspring PDA definitely doesn't have it, and unless you've got one of the newer, color screen models, yours probably doesn't have Bluetooth either.

Right now I'm sitting at my desk in front of my blue G3. It's got my scanner, stereo speakers, PDA cradle, digital camera cable, printer, and FireWire cable (for the iPod) connected to it. Things work well, but take a look down on the floor behind the machine and you'll see a mess of wires. If my desk wasn't positioned in the middle of the room, I could hide these unsightly wires behind the computer. Unfortunately, that can't be done in this situation.

Whether Bluetooth will catch on and gain popularity remains to be seen. It certainly has the potential to replace many forms of wired communication between devices, but until it replaces all of them we'll still have a few cables to carry around in our laptop bags.

Recent Apple Archive articles

iPods, notebooks, and other modern electronics more readily replaced than repaired, 12.07. Whether it's an intermittent failure or a broken display cable, more often than not it's cheaper to replace a broken electronics device than repair it.
Options for replacing your older iPod, 11.19. Whether you've run out of space on your old iPod or want features it doesn't have, here are your options in new and used iPods.
Could the $200 'green' PC with gOS Linux become a threat to Apple?, 11.14. The low cost, low power Everex desktop comes with a customized version of Ubuntu Linux, has a Mac-like Dock, and sells for $400 less than the Mac mini.
Leopard different, a bit buggy, but worth the upgrade, 11.02. Leopard on a Power Mac G4 and a MacBook Pro: It runs well on both computers, but each has some odd bugs, and some of the changes are a step backwards.
More in the Apple Archive index.

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Mac of the Day: 17" iMac G4/800 MHz, July 2002 - The iMac 'grows up' with a 17" 1440 x 900 display.
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November 8 in LEM history: 99: OS 9: I think I like it - 01: The simplified Mac life - Soured on Windows - Flea market Mac - 02: Little room for improvement in new 'Books - Combo drive upgrade for iceBooks - 04: Re-Porter - 05: Fix the old iMac or buy a Mac mini? - Apple's Copland project - 06: MacBook Core 2 - MacBook value equation - Cheap is as cheap does - 07: Problems with Classic mode in Tiger - The G4 Power Mac that won't run Leopard
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