The Bluetooth Holiday Spec-tacular

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Chris Welch, and Sean Hollister celebrate the holiday season with a full show dedicated to Bluetooth. 03:57 - We play Bluetooth Jeopardy! Play along here 30:38 - The crew discuss the many codecs layered onto the Bluetooth spec, and where the standard is headed. 46:56 - Former Bluetooth SIG executive director Dr. Mike Foley joins the show to discuss his time in charge of Bluetooth. Happy Holidays! Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Connected to mobile device.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular, the flagship podcast of the holidays, of all of the holidays.

• 0:33Alex Cranz?

  All of them.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  The one episode a year where we dive deep into a spec that makes all of our lives go. We've done HDMI. This year, we're doing Bluetooth. Alex Cranz is here. Hey, Alex.

• 0:43Alex Cranz?

  Hey, I am wearing Bluetooth headphones just this once in honor of the Holiday Spectacular.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  And that's why Alex sounds bad. Thank you, Alex, for joining us with your compressed audio. We love it. Chris Welch and Sean Hollister are going to join us. We're going to have a bit of a discussion about Bluetooth, the standard, where it's going, what it means, what it could turn into. We're going to play a round of Bluetooth Jeopardy, which is so hard. Let me tell you.

• 1:09Alex Cranz?

  So hard.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  Whatever you think Bluetooth Jeopardy is, when I say we're going to play Bluetooth Jeopardy, it is so much harder than you think it's going to be. You're going to watch us struggle through that.

• 1:18Alex Cranz?

  We do great.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  We did. It was fun. We had a good time.

• 1:22Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  And then we're going to interview the former executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, Dr. Mike Foley. We tried to get the current director of the Bluetooth SIG. That's the standards body that oversees Bluetooth. It's the holidays, so he couldn't do it. Mike Foley, the former director, he's the one who launched Bluetooth 3.0. He oversaw Bluetooth. Man's a shark. He joined us. He had some very interesting things to say about the status of Bluetooth, how political it is, and where it might be going. I mean, all in all, when you think of the holidays, you think of one hour of extremely deep Bluetooth conversation. Alex, I don't know what you think of.

• 1:56Alex Cranz?

  That's all I think about. I want to know the codex.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think about codex. The children are sleeping, the gifts are wrapped, the little blue pairing lights are blinking. It's going to be great. Alex, what headset are you on right now?

• 2:08Alex Cranz?

  I'm on my AirPods Pro, I think.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  How's the Bluetooth?

• 2:11Alex Cranz?

  You know, it's fine. It's not shutting off right now because I'm not leaving my house. Every time I leave my house, it dies, like just instant shuts down. But I'm on the road to Texas and it sounds, it sounds good enough.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm very happy to be with you in this moment, in this holiday season and season of giving and love. When I think about how to express my love for you and the Vergecast audience, it is definitely one hour of talking about Bluetooth.

• 2:39Alex Cranz?

  A hundred percent. It was actually on my Christmas wish list this year.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  And get ready, everyone. All right. Like I said, Bluetooth trepidity. It is so much harder than you think.

• 2:48Alex Cranz?

  We brought it.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Get your minds in the holiday spirit. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back and play around with Bluetooth trepidity.

• 2:56Alex Cranz?

  Cue the sleigh bells.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  This is Bluetooth Jeopardy.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Now entering the studio are today's contestants. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, master of Plex Media Server, Alex Krantz. Our resident earbud quality tester, originally from Rockland County, New York, Chris Welch. And The Verge's editor in chief from Racine, Wisconsin, Neelai Patel. And now, here is the host of Bluetooth Jeopardy, Sean Hollister.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. If you know how to play Jeopardy, you know how to play this. Except every question is related to one of our favorite short-range wireless standards. The person to pick first is the first person to hold up a Bluetooth device on the screen. Let's hear from our contestants. What are you holding, Neelai? It's an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Does that count? It counts. Sure, I'll take it. Alex, is that a Bluetooth trackball you have there?

• 5:56Alex Cranz?

  Yes, but it was also I was holding up my iPhone 14 Pro, not Max, because I have small hands.

• 6:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, I'm literally holding a Bluetooth mouse and I forgot to hold up the Bluetooth mouse. And I held up my phone instead.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  And Chris, what is your Bluetooth pick? I've got a Pixel 7 in my hand.

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  Is this how Jeopardy works?

• 6:15Speaker 05

  All right, all right. Good luck, and let's go to work. Let's look at today's categories.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  We have Genesis, the early days of Bluetooth. Pair me, please. Each answer will be a Bluetooth device. Spectacular. We get into the specs of Bluetooth. Bluetooth.com, some PR messaging from Bluetooth we found on their site. Hack Week, the security concerns of Bluetooth. And of course, potpourri. Will you start us off? Alex Cranz.

• 6:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I'm gonna take potpourri for 200.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Alex! That is potpourri, and the answer is: The first Bluetooth device, a hands-free mobile headset, earned the Best of Show Award at this trade show. Chris Welch.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  I will be there in a matter of weeks. What is CES?

• 7:07Alex Cranz?

  Be wrong, be wrong, be wrong.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  Wrong.

• 7:09Alex Cranz?

  Yes!

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Alex Cranz.

• 7:12Alex Cranz?

  What is Mobile World Congress?

• 7:14Speaker 05

  Incorrect. Neelai.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  What is CDIA?

• 7:20Speaker 05

  I'm afraid that's not the correct answer. What is Comdex?

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  Old-ass standard.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  Predated CES, technically.

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  Yes, Comdex turned into CES. Can Chris get like half a point?

• 7:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  Is this how Jeopardy works? Are we allowed to use Jeopardy as much as we're saying Jeopardy?

• 7:36Speaker 05

  Neelai, you may pick the next category.

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  It's my turn still.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  It should be. I'm ceding consideration to our editor-in-chief.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  I will take pair me please for 200.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  If you really want to pwn noobs, we'll connect this gaming system, which was the first to use both Bluetooth and Blu-ray technologies. Alex Cranz.

• 7:57Alex Cranz?

  What is the PlayStation 3?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 8:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, she got it.

• 8:03Alex Cranz?

  Yes, I'm in the zeros.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  You pick the next category.

• 8:07Alex Cranz?

  Jenna Five Sis for 1,000.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  Bluetooth was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to this data cable. Alex Cranz.

• 8:16Alex Cranz?

  I want you to know my strategy today is to just hit the buzzer as soon as Sean starts asking the questions, every time. But I think maybe, what is scuzzy?

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  Wow, I know that's wrong.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Wrong. Neelai Patel.

• 8:32Nilay Patel?

  What is the 2.5mm headphone cable?

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Incorrect.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, well, it was worth a shot. If it's USB, I'm gonna be so mad. Chris, can you just try and see if it's USB?

• 8:41Speaker 06

  I'm gonna keep my lead here.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  The correct response in this case is RS232. I would have also accepted cereal.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  Definitely had that one right in the back pocket.

• 8:51Alex Cranz?

  Scuzzy is like cereal.

• 8:53Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Cranz, you're next.

• 8:55Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna do Jena5sis for 800.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  Oh, God. This was the data transfer speed of Bluetooth 1.0 in 1999. Alex Cranz Slam Bam Ram is the exact text I have in my buzzer window.

• 9:11Alex Cranz?

  What is one megabit?

• 9:14Speaker 05

  Close. Anyone else?

• 9:16Alex Cranz?

  Does that mean I lost?

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  What is 750 kilobits?

• 9:21Speaker 05

  That is also very close.

• 9:23Nilay Patel?

  What is 751 kilobits?

• 9:27Speaker 05

  The correct answer is 721 kilobits per second.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  Zero points out of megabits per second.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  Would any of you like to take a moment to reflect on how we all have negative scores going into this?

• 9:44Nilay Patel?

  We're doing great.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Neelai is at the lead with negative 2000.

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  Is that the lead? I think Chris is in the lead with negative 200.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  That's correct. Cranz, pick the next, please.

• 9:54Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna mix it up a little. Bluetooth.com 400.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  This is a new Bluetooth audio capability that would allow multiple devices to find and join an audio broadcast via Bluetooth in areas like concert venues and airports. And this question is very long. Welch.

• 10:13Speaker 06

  What is AuraCast?

• 10:15Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 10:15Speaker 06

  Wow. I'm very proud of myself for one correct answer.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  We have a positive score on the board. Pick the next.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  Let's get wild. Let's do Hack Week for 1000.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  This open source USB device could sniff and monitor Bluetooth signals from nearby devices using an antenna powered by an ARM Cortex M3 chip. Cranz Slam Bam Ram.

• 10:35Alex Cranz?

  What is the coconut?

• 10:37Speaker 05

  No.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  Can I have a clarification on the rules? Am I allowed to Google the answers?

• 10:43Speaker 05

  No. The correct answer is the Uber Tooth 1.

• 10:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 10:47Alex Cranz?

  Stupid name.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Uh, Chris Welch.

• 10:50Speaker 06

  Oh, okay. Let's go for Bluetooth.com for 600, please.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  Competing with standards like Zigbee and Thread, this standard is designed to allow multiple Bluetooth devices to operate as beacons for large scale device networks. Chris Welch.

• 11:05Speaker 06

  What is Bluetooth Mesh?

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Yes. You pick next.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  Uh, let's do "Pair Me Please" for 800.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  This model of this fruitful computer introduced both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for the first time in 2016.

• 11:20Alex Cranz?

  What is the Raspberry Pi?

• 11:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:23Alex Cranz?

  Yes, Neelai and I are tied now.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  You're going down, Cranz.

• 11:27Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna do "Popery" for 800.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  FCC filings by GameStop in 2020 depicted a Bluetooth speaker that looked like this Pokémon. Neelai Patel.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  I only know the name of one Pokémon, and it's Pikachu, and it's gotta be Pikachu.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  No.

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  Damn it!

• 11:45Speaker 05

  Alex Cranz.

• 11:46Alex Cranz?

  What is Charmander?

• 11:49Speaker 05

  Incorrect.

• 11:49Alex Cranz?

  Oh.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  And now we just have to name Pokémon for the rest of the show.

• 11:53Alex Cranz?

  Chris, buzz in, buzz in, you got this.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Those are the only two I know. I'm gonna throw in the towel on this one. The correct response, in this case, is "Jigglypuff."

• 12:03Alex Cranz?

  I was gonna say "Jigglypuff," and I was like, "It's gotta be one of the starters."

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Neelai and Alex, given that you are currently in negative numbers, how do you plan to pay back the money?

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna go with "Spectacular" by 200.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  This system, introduced with Bluetooth 2.0, increased the security provided by a Bluetooth link, as well as making the pairing process more user-friendly. Neelai Patel.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  What is EDR?

• 12:26Speaker 05

  No. Alex Cranz.

• 12:28Alex Cranz?

  So, actually, is Bluetooth even secure?

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  No, it just says "increase the security," it didn't say "secure."

• 12:35Alex Cranz?

  Who's determined that? Can I get some clarification?

• 12:38Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, we're out of time.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  Alex is filibustering Jeopardy!

• 12:44Speaker 05

  The correct answer is "simple, secure pairing." Neelai, you go again.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  "Spectacular" for 400.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  One of the most significant changes in this version of Bluetooth was the ability to transfer data over Wi-Fi. Neelai.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  What is Bluetooth 2.1?

• 13:00Speaker 05

  No.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  What is Bluetooth 4.0?

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Anyone else want to ask? Alex Cranz.

• 13:07Alex Cranz?

  What is Bluetooth 3.0?

• 13:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 13:12Alex Cranz?

  Yes. Thank you for narrowing it down.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  Chris is just never going to answer a question again.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Exactly. I'm just gonna sit on this lead. Currently, we have Chris Welch at the lead with 800 points, Alex Cranz with the commanding second at negative $2,400, and Eli bringing up the lead at negative 3,200.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  I appreciate that you continue referring to it as the lead. Thank you for that.

• 13:39Speaker 05

  Alex, it's your pick.

• 13:40Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna do spectacular for a thousand.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  This is Sony's own Bluetooth codec, which enables transmission of high-res audio at a maximum bit rate of 990 kilobits per second. Chris Welch. Time to pad the lead here a little bit. What is LDAC? Correct. Let's do pair me please 600. This was the first Kindle to support Bluetooth audio. Alex Cranz.

• 14:10Alex Cranz?

  What is the original Kindle?

• 14:12Speaker 05

  No.

• 14:13Alex Cranz?

  I have to go away now.

• 14:14Nilay Patel?

  There are so many Kindles. You can just make up names.

• 14:17Alex Cranz?

  It has not worked for either of us before this.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  What is the Oasis? No, the Oasis was not the first with Bluetooth audio. That was the eighth-generation Kindle. Something I did not know until today.

• 14:31Alex Cranz?

  I should have just said Kendall.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  You should have just said Kendall.

• 14:34Speaker 05

  Chris, you'll continue. Apparently so. Let's do Bluetooth.com for 800. According to ABI Research, this many Bluetooth data transfer devices will ship in 2022.

• 14:46Alex Cranz?

  Can I ask a clarification question?

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 14:50Alex Cranz?

  Does that mean like phones? Just anything with Bluetooth in it?

• 14:55Nilay Patel?

  No, it's a standard. It's a new standard. It's a thing.

• 14:57Alex Cranz?

  Well, I'm not going to try to answer this.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  Were you just like hell at the spelling bee? You're like, can I define every word, please?

• 15:04Alex Cranz?

  I lost to Buffalo.

• 15:06Speaker 05

  And we're out of time. The answer is 1 billion.

• 15:09Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I was gonna guess that.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  I've been burned too many times.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Let's keep going, Chris. Uh, let's do Hack Week for 400. Often seen as a security threat, sending a picture or message from one user to an unsuspecting user through Bluetooth wireless technology is called this. Alex Cranz.

• 15:29Alex Cranz?

  What is my ride home on the subway?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  I like it, but no. Chris Welch.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  What is beam?

• 15:35Speaker 05

  No.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I buzzed in, and I want to say if I guess and it's close to right, I want the points.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  I'll consider it.

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  What is blue snarfing?

• 15:46Speaker 05

  The correct answer is, what is bluejacking?

• 15:49Nilay Patel?

  See, I knew it was something like that. It's close enough.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  Not close enough, unfortunately.

• 15:55Speaker 06

  He had blue and the verb part down. Yeah, it's, you know.

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  See, I knew it was something like that.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Once again, Chris Welch had the last correct answer, so let's continue on.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Okay. Let's see what happens when we do pair me, please, for a thousand.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  This Bluetooth speaker was the most recent number one on our best Bluetooth speaker list at theverge.com.

• 16:15Alex Cranz?

  This is cheating.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  Claiming it offers pristine, detailed sound quality with a surprising amount of bass for its size, all at a rugged design you could take anywhere. Chris Welch.

• 16:25Speaker 06

  It's possible that I wrote this article. Possible. What is the Bose SoundLink Flex?

• 16:33Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, that is the correct answer.

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  Unfortunately.

• 16:36Alex Cranz?

  This was cheating.

• 16:37Speaker 06

  That's not very fair. Even I can acknowledge that.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Good. Let's keep the good times rolling. Chris Welch, your next category.

• 16:45Speaker 06

  Hack Week for 600, please.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  In 2004, Nokia and Sony Ericsson admitted some of their handsets were vulnerable to this: a method of hacking into a Bluetooth-enabled device and accessing personal information. Alex Cranz.

• 17:00Alex Cranz?

  What is blue snarfing?

• 17:02Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 17:04Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Come on, man. It's the worst outcome.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  And Eli continues to slide into oblivion.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  First of all, I would like some points for even knowing that blue scarfing was a term and having that in my brain. I can't remember people's names. I forgot my own child's name the other day. I'm holding on to blue scarfing. That's worth a thousand points.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  With the last correct answer, we have Chris Welch with 1800 points, Alex at negative 2800, and Neelai at negative 3600.

• 17:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, the moral victory of knowing that blue scarfing was a real word is very high, and I'm currently the winner. I'm just putting that out there.

• 17:43Alex Cranz?

  I want you to know, I did not know it was a real word. I thought you made it up.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  I can't believe I confused blue scarfing and bluejacking. That's a rookie Bluetooth jeopardy mistake.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Cranz, want to continue this?

• 17:56Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I'm gonna do potpourri for 1,000. That was my really good Sean Connery impression.

• 18:02Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 18:03Alex Cranz?

  Thanks.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  This year, the Bluetooth standard organization thought this company was trying to get a free ride by putting Bluetooth branding in cars without paying requisite product declaration fees. Those last five words are in air quotes. We're getting its cars certified. Neelai Patel.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  Who is Stellantis or FCA? It's one of, they're the same company.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Yes, it's correct.

• 18:26Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I'm deeply aware of when Chrysler is doing dumb things. That's my zone.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Neelai, you're next.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh no, I can't, I can't. You can't follow the highs with the lows. Let's go with spectacular for 600.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  This subset of Bluetooth 4.0 was previously known as Y-Bree, which was intended for such industries as fitness, security, and home entertainment. It later tried to track the novel coronavirus.

• 18:50Nilay Patel?

  Y-Bree?

• 18:51Speaker 05

  I will accept Y-Bree as a pronunciation.

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  And we know what Y-Bree is.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  You probably know what the answer to this one is.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  I do, because I can guess. I mean,

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Just, just, just, just guess.

• 19:05Nilay Patel?

  What is Bluetooth LE?

• 19:07Speaker 05

  The correct answer is Bluetooth Low Energy.

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  There.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Kick us off again.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  Spectacular for 800.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  These are sets of specifications or rules that determine how a Bluetooth device is used, whether it's hand-free, has LAN access, or even an iPod accessory. Neelai.

• 19:24Nilay Patel?

  What are Bluetooth profiles?

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 19:27Nilay Patel?

  I knew this was my category.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  And one more.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Now I want to stop.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  Let's go with bluetooth.com for 200.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  This is the standards organization and they've already buzzed in. The standards organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and licensing of the Bluetooth technologies and trademarks to manufacturers. The answer, Chris Welch.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  What is the Bluetooth SIG?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 19:52Alex Cranz?

  How did he know?

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Just got in ahead of Eli.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  Next one, Chris.

• 19:55Speaker 06

  Okay, let's do popery for 600.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  On the company's website, this speaker is listed to have nine ways to listen to audio, none of which is pairing via Bluetooth. Alex Cranz.

• 20:08Alex Cranz?

  What is the Sonos? Chris, nod or turn away? Give me tips.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  We're moving on. Anybody else want to try? Eli Patel.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  What is the HomePod Mini?

• 20:20Speaker 05

  That might be true. The answer is the Apple HomePod.

• 20:24Speaker 06

  I think the judges can accept that. Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Next, Eli, you're up again.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, the exhilaration of this run, it's too much.

• 20:31Alex Cranz?

  You're almost into the positives.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  Pair me, please, for 400.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  And the answer, a Daily Double. Just kidding, there's no round two.

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  Thank God.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  In 2021, this device had a surprise upgrade that added Bluetooth audio support four years after its initial release. Chris Welch.

• 20:52Speaker 06

  What is the Nintendo Switch?

• 20:55Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 20:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Pick again.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Let's just close out the bluetooth.com for 1,000.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  And here's the clue. Recently, it was announced Bluetooth would be expanding into this frequency spectrum band, and according to bluetooth.com, it will pay of the way for the next 20 years of Bluetooth innovation.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  And we're running out of time.

• 21:19Alex Cranz?

  I'm trying to type faster into my phone to Google it, but it's not working.

• 21:23Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I can't cheat fast enough.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  And the correct response in this case is the 6 gigahertz spectrum band.

• 21:33Speaker 06

  I could have guessed that.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  Also handy for certain forms of Wi-Fi. Next, let's go again with Chris.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  Let's do Hack Week for 200.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Three former campaign aides to this elected official told West Wing Playbook she does not use Bluetooth headsets for security reasons and insists on using wired headphones instead. Neelai.

• 21:53Nilay Patel?

  Who's Kamala Harris?

• 21:55Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  This story is great.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  Go again.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm so close to positive. Let's go with Hack Week for 800.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  Limited to Class 2 Bluetooth radios, this form of Bluetooth attack creates a backdoor for hackers which could allow them to listen to all the phone conversations.

• 22:10Alex Cranz?

  Give us a hint. Just like a little hint.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  I have a hint. It is not blue snarppit.

• 22:16Alex Cranz?

  Is it Jigglypuff?

• 22:17Speaker 05

  Okay, we're out of time. It's bluebucking.

• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  So far in this episode of Jeopardy, we've heard about bluejacking, blue snarthing, and now bluebugging.

• 22:25Alex Cranz?

  There's nothing left in Hack Week.

• 22:27Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say tooth spoofing with no G at the end.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  I like it.

• 22:31Nilay Patel?

  All right. We gotta knock down this Genesis category. Let's go Genesis for 200.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  The king with a dental problem united Denmark and Norway in 958 A.D. Alex Cranz.

• 22:44Alex Cranz?

  Who is Harold Bluetooth?

• 22:46Speaker 05

  I will accept that. It is King Harold Bluetooth Gormensen.

• 22:51Alex Cranz?

  That's misspelled. Someone misspelled this. His name is Harold.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  Ah, go again.

• 22:56Alex Cranz?

  Uh, I'm gonna do Genesis for 400 and hope Neelai doesn't get it right.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Intel, Nokia, and this industry leader met to plan the standardization of Bluetooth in 1996. Chris Welch. What is Qualcomm? No. Neelai.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Who is Sony Ericsson?

• 23:15Speaker 05

  Ericsson is the correct answer.

• 23:17Alex Cranz?

  Damn it!

• 23:18Speaker 05

  We'll give you the points.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Oh, I'm at zero. I'm done. No more answers for me. I fought myself back to negative territory. You're not bluejacking this away from me. Potpourri for 400.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  He said this about Bluetooth. "There are quality issues. The bandwidth isn't high enough, and even if it does get there someday, people don't want to recharge their headphones." Neelai.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  Who is Steve Jobs?

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  That's a classic Steve Jobs quote.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  As we go into our last two questions, we have Chris Welch in the lead with 2,000, Neelai at 400, and Alex at negative $3,000.

• 23:54Alex Cranz?

  I can still bring this around.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  That leaves our final question, Genesis for 600. And the answer is, this was the first mobile phone to include Bluetooth in 2001. Somewhere Dieter Bohn is crying that he can't be answering this question right now. And nobody is buzzing in. Can we say a company? You can say whatever you like. Whether you get the points or not will depend on how close it is. Neelai?

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  What is the Nokia N92?

• 24:25Speaker 05

  Not even close. Anyone else? Three, two, one. The answer is the Sony Ericsson T39. I would have also accepted T36.

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I would like some points for saying brand name and letters and numbers.

• 24:42Alex Cranz?

  You get that.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  I got the format of the answer correct.

• 24:44Alex Cranz?

  Don't take his points away. He was in the positive.

• 24:47Nilay Patel?

  I wasn't like, what is the HGC bacon? I was like, what are some letters and numbers?

• 24:52Speaker 05

  All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be right back with Final Jeopardy.

• 24:58David Pierce?

  This is David at The Verge, and this is the Motorola Hint. This is sort of the smallest of the announcements that Motorola had today. It's a tiny little Bluetooth headset. They don't want to call it a Bluetooth headset because there's all sorts of stigmas with that, but it's a Bluetooth headset. It's made to be super discreet and nice looking. It comes in this wood, plus a bunch of other materials that are designed to look really, really nice in your ear. And on one level, it's just a Bluetooth headset. You put it in your ear, you make phone calls, you can do voice control on the phone, and there's all this cool Motorola Assist and Motorola Actions and stuff that all work. But on the other hand, it's kind of extra special for a Bluetooth headset. For the one thing, it's tiny. For another thing, it's super sensitive. So it's made to go in your ear just like this, and there's a sensor on it that recognizes when it's in your ear, and it'll automatically

• 25:40David Pierce?

  turn on and connect. And then as soon as you take it out, it'll disconnect, and even if you're on a call, it'll route it straight back to your phone. So it's made to be super simple and to basically be worn all day, but you can have it come and go as you please. So it's $149. It's designed to be used with the new Moto X and the Moto G, but it'll work with lots of other phones, too. There's some special stuff with the way that Moto X works that makes it even better for voice actions. But the Moto Hint is designed as really it's a wearable. It's not a Bluetooth headset, though. It's kind of a Bluetooth headset. So the Hint is kind of a weird little accessory. I'm not sure how many people are going to get into it. I kind of like it, but we'll see how it does when it comes out with the Moto X this fall.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  Okay, we're back. This is our final Jeopardy! question. The first version of Bluetooth used a modulation scheme called this, which modulated carrier shifts between two frequencies representing ones and zeros. You have 30 seconds. Good luck.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the police are coming because we're playing this music. I'm very worried about this entire situation.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  All right, let's see what our contestants wrote. Chris, you're in the lead, so let's begin. You have 2,000 points. What was your answer?

• 27:17Speaker 06

  I have no answer, but I also wagered no money, and I drew a smiley face

• 27:24Speaker 06

  to signal my victory.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Well played. Neelai?

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  All right. I wagered $5,000, and I wrote "frequency shift pulsing."

• 27:35Speaker 06

  Interesting.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  That was not the answer. Let's see how much it's going to cost you. $5,000? Okay.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  Alex Cranz with negative 3,000. What did you decide to dip your pockets into?

• 27:49Alex Cranz?

  So I put $1 billion on the line for binary baby shuffle.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  Excellent, excellent. The correct answer was GFSK.

• 28:03Alex Cranz?

  I was close.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Gaussian frequency shift key.

• 28:06Nilay Patel?

  I got some words in there. That counts.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  I feel like some of your random words were among the right words.

• 28:12Speaker 06

  Something to do with the frequency.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  User word frequency and the word shift, which were in the question.

• 28:19Alex Cranz?

  He gets 2,500. Give him 2,500. He earned it. Don't put him in the negative.

• 28:24Speaker 05

  And the winner of today is Chris Welch with 2,000 FTX tokens. Thank you for playing.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  Chris has won nothing. You know, I would be in the lead if I'd under, if I remembered the difference between bluejacking and bluesnorting. I just want to put that out.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  We'll be right back with more of the Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular.

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• 30:20Nilay Patel?

  Happy holidays and welcome back to the Veritas Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. Full hour of audio about Bluetooth. We've got an all-star panel here on the Holiday Bluetooth Spectacular. Talk about Bluetooth, where it is now, the future of it, and the many threats that face our favorite low-range and quite honestly, overtax wireless standard.

• 30:43Nilay Patel?

  Chris, it's all the same people who play Jeopardy. Like, what am I, what are we doing here? I'm here, I'm Eli. Chris Welch is here. Hey, Chris.

• 30:49Speaker 06

  Hey.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  Sean Hollister, who was the host of Jeopardy, now finds himself on the other side of the equation. Welcome, Sean.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  It is horror. I am your friend who wishes I had some earbuds that had pairing to multiple devices at once. That'd be great.

• 31:03Nilay Patel?

  And Kranz is here. Hey, Kranz.

• 31:05Alex Cranz?

  I'm your friend who's pissed at Sean for his rude scoring of me during Jeopardy.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Sean, I don't know if you understand, the point of this segment is revenge. Taking, of course, our inspiration from Bluetooth, the notorious pirate who sought only revenge. I have not read anything about said pirate. I just, he's a pirate.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  The Verge has been about revenge for a very long time. It's fitting that we bring it back for Christmas.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  Sean and I are, these are founders. We founded this whole site on revenge, so this is all fitting. Okay, let's talk about Bluetooth in the context of the holidays. Chris, you cover the headphone space pretty carefully. It seems like the moment for Bluetooth right now is everyone has hit the bandwidth limits of Bluetooth as we know it, and they're doing stuff next to it. They're doing stuff on top of it. What is going on here?

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think they're all trying to just kind of stand out with their headphone quality. Samsung has their own codec. You've got Sony with LDAC, which is actually kind of spread between a bunch of headphone makers. And then there's Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound, which might be CD quality sometime soon, but you're gonna need new earbuds and who knows, probably a new phone.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  I got pitches literally today.

• 32:15Alex Cranz?

  We're not to CD quality yet?

• 32:17Speaker 06

  I mean, Sony's close-ish. Samsung says they can do 24-bit audio on the Buds 2 Pro, but like, the actual bitrate is unclear, so who knows what quality it actually is. It's all just a mess. But like, yeah, the idea is that they can say like, these products are now Hi-Fi, or just sound better than they did before, so you upgrade and buy a new set of headphones, earbuds, or...

• 32:37Alex Cranz?

  They'll now work with Tidal.

• 32:38Speaker 06

  Tidal. But no Spotify Hi-Fi, which was announced almost two years ago and has yet to come to fruition.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  So the protocol itself is like, just a few megabits per second, right? That's all you can transmit between Bluetooth devices at a time? And so that's the hesitation here?

• 32:53Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah, that and plus like the actual, so the file codecs, that's Apple's used the AAC codec forever. They felt no need to ever go beyond that so far.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Apple will claim that the actual codec they use between the phone and AirPods is they're tweaking it all the time and improving it all the time. This is what they claim. Is it stock AAC or is Apple messing with AAC on the edges all the time to do some proprietary AirPods stuff? That no one else has access to. We don't know. We can't verify what they're actually doing between their own devices and their closed ecosystem. And this is what everyone else seems to be doing, right? Like you, you are stuck with a handful of codecs that you can license from Snapdragon or Sony or whatever. But you're stuck with some basic limitations of Bluetooth and then you have to add on to them or do something proprietary.

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  To add more features or more sound quality. And that doesn't seem like the industry has settled on standards. It seems like Samsung is basically like, wouldn't it be cool if everyone bought Samsung headphones and they bought a Galaxy phone?

• 33:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, when you have like seven different codecs, there's just a lot going on and I don't know how anybody really keeps it straight. Like someone who just goes and buys a new pair of headphones from like Sennheiser or Bowers and Wilkins. Like they support stuff like APTX and like APTX HD and APTX lossless. Even that one standard has like four tiers of different. So it's gotten a bit jumbled.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  I think part of this is that the standards aren't very good. Like I just wrote about this with the Steam Deck. If you want to set up your Bluetooth earbuds and hear what you're doing on your game system. The default is that it uses a profile that is not low latency. It's supposed to be like high quality instead of low latency. And so you have this tremendous lag and I swing a sword and I don't hear it till almost an entire second is passed. Where's my whoosh? I want to hear my whoosh. But they have to, they have to choose between the high quality or the low latency. You don't get both automatically.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  So it's only if you use the LDAC codec and you choose like the highest setting, I think it's like 960 kilobits per second. It gets like really unstable and it cuts out constantly. So even that, like at its best quality, just doesn't work very well. So I think there is like a next step to come. And it sounds like Qualcomm has new chips coming for phones that, and some for headphones too, that'll like make things more stable and hopefully keep that higher quality and actually, so you can enjoy it, not just have cutouts all the time.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  So Apple uses AAC, other people are using other proprietary codecs like LDAC and Snapdragon Sound.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:21Nilay Patel?

  Great name. But it sounds like there's an actual Bluetooth audio codec upgrade coming with LC3. It sounds like there's functionality updates coming with AuraCast. What's going on there?

• 35:32Speaker 06

  So I haven't really looked into AuraCast too much. I think it's just gonna be one of those things where you can pair with like multiple devices at once, or like several phones compared to one speaker, things like that.

• 35:41Speaker 05

  Theoretically, I love this idea. You're gonna be in your airport or your hospital and you're listening to your music on your earbuds, but you've also apparently opted in to connect to like the local AuraCast access point. And so you'll hear your airport announcement. And instead of them trying to like pump up the sound to a ridiculous level, which blows at everybody's ears, just so they can get through the earbuds that you have on, it'll just go directly there and hopefully also not blow out your ears.

• 36:05Alex Cranz?

  Like magic.

• 36:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're gonna find a way to use that for advertising in one second. I'm just, I just, I just know how this goes. That seems interesting, right? Like, everything is wireless. There are new seat back. I think United has new seat backs, entertainment units that have Bluetooth. But the actual like LC3 codec functionality, it's not out yet. When's that coming?

• 36:27Speaker 06

  I think it's starting to roll out. My latest version of Android supports it. And there are some earbuds that will get updates for it. But it's not so much about quality. Like, it's about more efficiency. And so it's not so much gonna like change the game in terms of like, you know, like lossless streaming or any of that. It's just gonna be more efficient and should work better.

• 36:42Alex Cranz?

  So it'll improve battery life?

• 36:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, stuff like that.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  So Chris, just like, let's run down the list here. So Sony has LDAC. It tops out at 990. You're saying it's unreliable. There's standard Bluetooth SBC, which tops out at 328. The fact that we're only at CD quality, and I get why people say CD quality, because once you get above it, it's very hard for people to hear the difference, like.

• 37:05Speaker 06

  Right. And most people say that you can't even tell the difference between like AAC and CD quality. And that's what Apple said for years and years and years, until suddenly there was spatial audio and lossless on Apple Music.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  But Apple stuff, even over wireless, there's no lossless over any wireless connection to an Apple product.

• 37:19Speaker 06

  Right.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? And even on a phone, they kind of want you to plug in a different DAC to get lossless out of it. So just compare and contrast these, these codecs for me, like, inside of Bluetooth. There's a bunch of ways to get audio out and most of them are hitting a limit. And then there's the functionality stuff like Oracast, pair your stuff to any TV you're walking by. Simply, there's Apple's H1 and H2 chips where they're they're controlling the connection more directly in a proprietary way that no one else has access to. There's fast pair in Android. What's left of this standard? Like, what's the point?

• 37:55Speaker 06

  I think it's just a case where people just build on top of it and build on top of it and build on top of it and see how far they can push it. I mean, you've also got like spatial audio and all that stuff that's on the AirPods. Coming soon to the Pixel Buds Pro. It's already on Samsung earbuds. So it's just like, how can we build on top of just the core earbuds experience? And keep selling new pairs? Because if they sound great, then that's not all that matters. Obviously, they want to like.

• 38:18Alex Cranz?

  Isn't the core experience, though, kind of crummy? Like, I think we all make the sacrifice of using these earbuds because they're way more convenient. And also because everybody got rid of the port to plug in regular earbuds. But they're still kind of crummy. Like, we were talking about this before we started recording. Anytime I leave my house, if I touch the door just right, it'll disconnect my earbuds consistently. Right? And for years, like, it has to actually send the audio signal to both earbuds because it can't communicate through your body. Because Bluetooth's like biggest problem is dealing with the fact that water exists.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 38:56Alex Cranz?

  Like, it feels like we Bluetooth has a limit and everybody's just like, we're going to keep piling on top of the garbage pile because we don't have anything else.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's gotten a bit better in that regard. Like, I think most of the recent earbuds and headphones I reviewed have much fewer cutouts than they used to. Like, there are like parts of the city where I would walk down and most stuff from like a few years ago would always drop out and constantly cut out. Uh, but now it's gotten a lot better.

• 39:15Alex Cranz?

  The Union Square station was like an earbud killer for years.

• 39:19Speaker 06

  Right. That and like Bryant Park and a lot of areas.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  I think it's one of the most intriguing things about these standard is that, you know, the one constant with every standard is that companies love to rebrand it, to sell you shit, to make it seem like you need their proprietary shit to make things work, even though it's actually a standard, like HDMI CC or USB versus Thunderbolt. But here, this is this is a situation where. Each of these companies is actually improving Bluetooth in some way. And it's a problem that the standard isn't good enough that they are pulling it in all these different proprietary directions.

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't think Apple ever says that AirPods are Bluetooth headphones. I think they're over it, right? They're just AirPods. You connect them to your iPhone and they work great and they pair to iCloud to your Mac and your Apple TV and whatever else. You just see Samsung trying to run the same playbook. You see Google trying to run the same playbook. And underneath it all is a sense that, okay, Bluetooth is a connectivity protocol and we can just run whatever codecs and whatever control software over that protocol to make the connection more stable. And I do not see a ton of investment into making Bluetooth itself better for all the devices in the ecosystem to play better together. The way that you honestly see it with Wi-Fi, you actually do see it with HDMI.

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  Like when we did the HDMI spectacular was because of HDMI 2.1 and like VRR came out and now all the TVs support variable refresh and it all, I would say it sort of works. Like it works more than it doesn't in a way that Bluetooth, you know, the refrain is it'll be better next year. Then there's all the other stuff Bluetooth is supposed to do, like run your smart home and form Bluetooth LE connections to pair Wi-Fi devices to your phone. And it's fine if that stuff, I think in that, in those cases, it's a utility, right? You bought a smart plug, you need to get it into HomeKit. You can just like wave your phone at it and it'll like pick up a Bluetooth connection and pair your smart plug. That's neat, but I fundamentally like Bluetooth as a protocol has now been shoved into like

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  this thing that headphone makers have to use that they would like to run away from as fast as they can, or they would like to hide as much as they can.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  If you look back at the last 15 years of Bluetooth, and I always think back to like the Motorola like HT 820 like cinnamon bun stereo headphones that I bought my wife, which were like the first Bluetooth stereo headphones. And I think about how shitty those were in so many ways. Not like the pairing of the audio quality, everything you had to do the memorization of like, how many seconds do I hold down which button on which side to make them pair properly? And like, if I look at every like five year span, I want to say the audio quality and connectivity and pairing have improved substantially from like one five year block to the next.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  Chris, do you think audio quality has improved substantially from one to five year blocks to the next? I think this is like the heart of what we're kind of talking about here is, yeah, sort of.

• 42:17Speaker 06

  It's easy to fall down a well, like what matters most, like the codec or like the mastering of a song. Like Apple even has their own like custom masterings of songs. They've got this whole program called mastered for iTunes or not iTunes anymore, but Apple Music. And so they have like their own files of songs that you don't get on Spotify or from Amazon. So like, is that what's sounds good or is it the codec or is it the headphone tuning or what? On the whole, I think they sound better than like five years ago. Like if you compare something like the Sony thousand XM five versus the thousand XM three or twos. Yeah, there's been some improvements. I mean, it's a slow incline.

• 42:48Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I've got the XM threes or the, the noise cancelling ones. So the one thousand XM threes, is that what they were called?

• 42:57Speaker 06

  Love the name. Yeah.

• 42:59Alex Cranz?

  Would I really notice a difference? Not in the noise cancelling, but in just like listening to music, would I really notice a big difference on the fives?

• 43:07Speaker 06

  Depends how much of an audio person you are. I think that that's part of it too. Like most people have like the first, well, not most people, but like a lot of people still have their first pair of AirPods and they love those.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  Spoken like a true audio person, Chris.

• 43:19Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 43:19Alex Cranz?

  I'm over here being like, it's CD quality, not yet.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Alex Cranz?

  And he's like, yeah.

• 43:23Nilay Patel?

  How smart are your ears, Cranz?

• 43:27Alex Cranz?

  Very dumb.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  I think there's that, but it's also just, you've got whatever the artist made, you've got music. Then you've got to compress it to deliver it over a streaming service because most of them are still not lossless. Then you've got to compress it again to send it to your headphones. So then your headphones have to do a bunch of work to like reproduce the sound. And that chain is like, I agree with you, it's hard to isolate it, Chris. But it's also, this is, this is the last thing Bluetooth is actually in charge of, right? Like, I don't think most people want to use like Bluetooth mice, like, right? Like any, like if you're a gamer, a Bluetooth master is just not going to do it for you. Like they could not make this protocol fast and reliable enough for that purpose.

• 44:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  If I was like, I'm going to run my smart home on Bluetooth. Most Vergecast listeners know that is like a suicidal idea.

• 44:16Alex Cranz?

  Please don't do that.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  Right? Bluetooth in cars is whole like today, like the dumbest thing. I was sitting downstairs. My wife got in our car and drove away and my phone just paired to the car and the phone call I was on transferred to the car as she drove away. Right? It's still just like dumb for that stuff in like hilarious ways. Google Maps is still faking phone calls to send navigation guidance to car stereos across the country because Bluetooth is just like too stupid to communicate well in all those scenarios. That's weird. So what you're left with, like the innovation appears to be in music and they are just up against hard bitrate constraints that make it impossible to do the next thing. And so you get, I think Chris, you and I have laughed at this kind of like

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  yo-yo from Apple where last year they're like, yep, we're out of space and Bluetooth wink, wink. We're doing some Apple stuff. And this year they're like, wait, actually special audio is a thing. We might not need the room. Bluetooth is just fine because I think they know if AirPods ditch Bluetooth, that's like a nuclear move for them, but people still need AirPods to connect to their Windows PCs or whatever.

• 45:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. So what happens next? Do they have some kind of like custom codec or platform that they use like on top of Bluetooth or like beside it? I think like maybe last year that person spoke out of turn and then all of a sudden this year there were rumors of the AirPods Pro 2 having some new codec or like lossless streaming. That didn't happen. So now all of a sudden they're like, you know what? Bluetooth works great. We love it. Good, good times. When the AirPods Max 2 come along and if those still use played old Bluetooth and AAC, I'll be kind of surprised because like two generations of $500 headphones that still stick to this old, very buggy standard that we've all talked about here is not the best thing. So we'll see what happens, I guess, next year.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Happy holidays, everyone. Bluetooth will be better next year.

• 46:03Nilay Patel?

  We gotta take a break. We'll be right back with more of the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular.

• 46:34Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week, as part of our special series on the future of business, I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 46:55Speaker 09

  We polled all that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 47:19Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 47:32Speaker 08

  This series is presented by EY.

• 47:36Speaker 00

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• 48:11Nilay Patel?

  We're back. So we're on to our next segment of the Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. We're going to interview Dr. Mike Foley, who was the CEO and executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. With me on that, Alex Cranz is here. Hey, Alex. Is she here?

• 48:26Alex Cranz?

  Oh.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  Are you on the right microphones?

• 48:28Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're in your, you're, you're using your cars mic and speakers right now. That's what's happening.

• 48:34Alex Cranz?

  I have no idea how to switch it.

• 48:36Nilay Patel?

  The car sounds worse than ever. We're definitely going to talk to Mike Foley about why the car sounds bad. That's coming up. Chris Welch is also here. Hey, Chris.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  Hey, hey.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  Chris, do me a favor. In the spirit of the holidays, describe to people what the Bluetooth SIG is.

• 48:51Speaker 06

  So the Bluetooth SIG SIG stands for special interest group is a collection of all these companies from Microsoft, from Intel, from Apple, that kind of like guide the way and choose what goes where and what to focus on for each version of Bluetooth spec.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  I always think of the people that run these trade groups as being politicians more than engineers. What should people be listening for in our conversation with Dr. Foley?

• 49:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, it does seem like a lot of politics and a lot of just, just sitting down and talking and trying to just find some common balance between like what the Bluetooth SIG wants and what these companies want, be it Samsung or Apple or whoever, to kind of build out features or include them in the spec. Cause we talked about, you know, like Apple and Samsung having their own kind of side things on top of Bluetooth. And so you'll hear kind of what that tussle entails about like when companies want to keep things for themselves or just bring them over to the spec in general at wide. And so it's a pretty interesting conversation. Mike's been gone for a while, but even back when he was there, you can hear that there was a lot of fascinating stuff going on.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And honestly, the, the current director of the Bluetooth SIG couldn't do it because it's the holidays, but I would say, I said this to Chris right after this conversation, that having the former person is actually better because he was raw. He was not shy.

• 49:56Speaker 06

  He was very raw.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So this is a great conversation. Again, truly the, the holiday spirit comes through in every moment of talking to Dr. Mike Foley, former CEO and executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. Let's run that interview.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  Dr. Michael Foley, you are the former executive director and CEO of the Bluetooth SIG and currently the CEO and founder of IYS. Welcome to the holiday spectacular.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  I can't tell you how excited I am to talk to you about Bluetooth in this, the holiday season. Let's start. You were at the SIG for a while from 2004 to 2012. You led it. You brought Bluetooth 3.0 to market. You led a merger with another standards body called the Wibree Forum. Tell me, in your role as the person who leads the standard, what's the structure of your day? Do you wake up and say, I gotta take over the Wibree people or they're gonna come get us? Do you do politics all day? What is that job like?

• 51:00Speaker 04

  It's interesting. I looked at kind of my role within the SIG as kind of three prongs. One, I led the organization. You know, we had a team at the time of about 60 people that worked for the Bluetooth SIG. So I led that group and that group did the websites, did the tools for Bluetooth, helped with members, create the specifications and publish them. So that in and of itself was a fairly big role. And then kind of the second pillar was evangelizing the technology and working with member companies on having them implement Bluetooth in their products.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Because remember when I started this, there were very few products that had Bluetooth in them. So getting Bluetooth just into products and being kind of a real technology was key at that point in time. It's not like today where 5 billion devices a year ship with Bluetooth. I mean, there was 50,000, 100,000, very small numbers at that time. So it was a different beast. And then the other one was more marketing and PR and analyst relations to promote the technology within the industry, but also to the consumer and try to convince them that the scenarios that Bluetooth was enabling was good for them, better for them,

• 52:26Speaker 04

  so that we'd create consumer demand to try to get companies to adopt the technology into them as well. So I kind of looked at it as three key areas.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  You led the Bluetooth SIG in what you're describing as a pivotal moment. I would agree. It was a pivotal moment. It's before phones are everywhere. It was certainly before wireless headphones were everywhere. We have a quote here from you in 2005, when you gave an interview to Engadget where I used to work. The quote is, "Probably next year, you'll be able to stream music to your car stereo from your phone." I mean, that's incredible, right? We're far beyond that. But in that time, 2005, 2006, it wasn't clear that Bluetooth was going to win. Right? There was like a competitive dynamic between Bluetooth, other wireless standards with Wi-Fi for a while, which I thought was always very fascinating. And then now with other things like Thread and Matter, there was a moment when Bluetooth was competitive for like smart home networking.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  How did you think about where Bluetooth was in the market in 2005? And where do you think it is now?

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Well, you're right. It's hard to believe back then, but there was a real question whether Bluetooth would ever be adopted or used in products. And that was highlighted by, I worked for Microsoft before I joined the Bluetooth SIG. And one of the first things I did was an analyst who were to get some feedback on where analysts thought the technology and try to convince them where it was going was a good idea and the like. And the first call I had with an analyst, his first question was, you know, how stupid are you? You left a great job at Microsoft to run this technology that will be dead in a year. And so that that made me think a little bit, well, maybe I'm not that smart.

• 54:09Speaker 04

  Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But the scenarios that Bluetooth was enabling, I thought were compelling and so did many other people. So convincing, you know, companies to adopt those and things was very important. And Bluetooth had, you know, some technical features, some other features that made it appealing for those scenarios and better than the other technologies for the initial scenarios that Bluetooth was used. You mentioned Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi is, at the time, excellent and still excellent networking technology and it's used for other things now as well.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  But, you know, home routers and laptops, networking was its killer scenario, if you will. And at least at the time, the 2004, 2005, 2006 timeframe, it really wasn't appropriate for, you know, the earpiece, the headset that you mentioned, purely because of power requirements, latency as well. But Primarily power and and cost. And so Bluetooth really was a good technology for those initial scenarios. And then, of course, we were able to keep adapting it and tweaking it for other use cases. And now today, which this kind of second wave of scenarios really

• 55:31Speaker 04

  started with Bluetooth four, Bluetooth low energy, which was the last spec that came out while I was running the organization. And that's really enabled Bluetooth to go into the health and fitness devices, the sensors, and just all sorts of new devices that really even in the 2004, 2005 timeframe, even Bluetooth wasn't properly suited for at that point, because it wasn't low enough energy for these sensor type devices. So, you know, once we got a foothold into the market, we were able to expand and improve the technology for more and more use cases.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  Tell me what that sales pitch was like. You go into Apple or Samsung or Dell or whatever, they're evaluating their range of standards to support. Did you have like a PowerPoint deck where they do you bribes under the table? What does that sales job look like? You take them golfing?

• 56:27Speaker 04

  I did that, yes.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  Because I'm a golfer as well. So there were some rounds of golf involved, but more times you would you'd go meet with companies. And yes, you'd have a PowerPoint deck that you had present, you know, the the numbers, the facts as you saw them and lots of conversations with them. And typically, one meeting and one, you know, PowerPoint deck wouldn't be enough to close the deal. So there was a journey and they develop relationships and friendships with these, you know, people that are building the products and go from there. One meeting that stands out vividly with that was us going into Sony and trying

• 57:13Speaker 04

  to convince their TV team to use Bluetooth for your remote control. You know, at that time, they were mainly IR based, but Sony was promoter or a proponent of using a different RF technology for the remote control. So it's a, it wasn't a very easy sell or, or meeting and stuff, but you, you start that way and go from there. And now Bluetooth is used in the vast majority of TV remote controls. And it didn't happen overnight, but over time and continuing and, you know, they told me the couple of things that were really needed in the spec before they could use a mini TV remote. So then you fix the spec to address those issues.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  And then, you know, eventually it gets used there.

• 58:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. If you're going to talk about Sony and Bluetooth, I got to throw to Chris here so we can talk about some codec stuff. Chris?

• 58:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I guess. I mean, I guess you were kind of gone before they came out with LDAC and the whole spec to raise the bit rates. But I guess like, what part of that did you play? Did you see it coming? And like, how do you feel now about like where things are headed? You've got Samsung, their earbuds do like 24 bit audio now. Like, what's the ceiling for what is possible with the Bluetooth audio in your mind?

• 58:26Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, I pretty much, the audio is migrating towards being run over the low energy channel rather than the, you know, a traditional Bluetooth channel. And a couple of, I think, really exciting things where the specs were just updated for that one running over low audio to be able to broadcast a stereo stream to multiple headphones. I think, you know, for sharing music between people or, you know, in a bar type environment where they have three games on, you can put your headphone on to whichever games, you know, you want to listen to, to hear that audio stream. And so I think there's a lot

• 59:07Speaker 04

  of cool things where, you know, Bluetooth audio is going to. And being able to have though, a basic functionality that allows interoperability between products from different manufacturers, but then also enable manufacturers, if they want to put improvements on top of that, whether, you know, it's a different codec or different bit rates, things like that to enable, you know, their own. Products or products of their partners to work better. I think that's a positive. You know that you keep the interoperability so you can use products from different manufacturers. But manufacturers are able to innovate on top of that as well and add their own, you know,

• 59:48Speaker 04

  special sauce, if you will, to make what they believe even improve products. And I, I, I think that's great. I think the technology should enable that.

• 59:57Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is that the political answer? Or is, do you believe that? Cause I don't. Now, just to be clear, I do not, like, that is Microsoft doing embrace, extend, extinguish, right? Where Apple uses, I'm just pick on Apple because everybody knows AirPods, but I know Samsung wants to do this and I know Google wants to do this. Apple gets to use the AirPods, they leverage Bluetooth, the spec, they build proprietary extensions that no one else can access. Eventually everyone loves AirPods and then they leave the spec behind and they leave everyone else high and dry. And I can pick on Apple, but Microsoft invented this playbook. It was called embrace extended extinguish with the web. Do you believe that that outcome can be managed by the Bluetooth Sig or you can avoid it? Or is that just the dynamic of the tech industry?

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Well, I, you know, when I was involved with the Sig, you would see some of that and a lot of the initial innovation was done that way. And then it would be rolled back into the specification. And now, you know, I can't speak for Apple with what they've done with some of their products and stuff. If they'd ever want to roll that back into the spec. But back in my day, when I was there, things like usability to make, you know, one of the early issues with Bluetooth was nobody could figure out how to pair devices and get them to work together.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Let me tell you, that's not just an early issue.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, fair enough, but it is better now than it was then. And there was a, a major push in a whole spec. You know, its hallmark feature was secure simple pairing, which made pairing easier. And that introduced a lot of the ways you pair today with it just works and things like that. And a lot of that spec came from companies that, you know, had already been working to improve the pairing experience because, you know, they, they saw the flaws in it at, at the time. And those were rolled back into the spec. Now, some of the things that have done since then to enhance pairing.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  Hasn't been rolled back into the spec yet, whether that ever will or not. You know, I'm not close enough to the Bluetooth organization now to know if there's an appetite from members to do that or not, but I think it can work. And I don't believe that all companies, when they're extending a spec or improving upon it, you know, are trying to wipe out the competition. Sure, they're trying to win and have the best products out there. If the spec is so complete, if you will, then it doesn't allow for that innovation. And that was something we discussed a lot with each spec is where you draw that line. You know, how much is in the spec and how much is company and a company's innovation

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  on top of that. And that was debated, you know, with, with every spec all the time. And again, I'm not in those meetings today, but I would assume that is still a major conversation piece is how much you put in the spec and how much you lead for company innovation.

• 1:03:03Alex Cranz?

  Can you kind of walk us through how you have those conversations where you want to roll it back?

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that's may sound like an absurd thing to do, but maybe I was just shameless. I would do that all the time.

• 1:03:18Alex Cranz?

  And it worked. That's awesome.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  That didn't bother me at all. Well, sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't. But, you know, what's the old saying, the worst they can do is say no.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  And I'm no worse off than I was before having the conversation or, or asking. And a lot of times also though, you would go and speak not only to Apple, but also companies that were building the products to work with the Apple products because they would be more motivated to want that stuff standardized. So those features could also work with Android phones or, you know, other products depending on what they were making. And they, you know, would then have those conversations with Apple as well that, you know, we had really liked to see this feature, that feature rolled into the standard.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  And, you know, obviously those companies would have a lot of pull as well.

• 1:04:15Alex Cranz?

  So when you have companies like Apple who are pretty vertically integrated now and they make the iPhones, they make the AirPods and everything else, that kind of disincentivizes them from like working with the standard more closely because yeah, they can just say, go kick rocks, Jabra.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, any company that's in that situation and you know, the Samsungs of the world, you know, there, there's a lot of companies that are in that position. So you're using Apple as an example, not trying to pick on them, I don't think. What you're saying is very true, but there's also the chip manufacturer, you know, the, the Qualcomm's of the world that want to be able to create their silicon and have it work in products to all their customers, not just Apple or Samsung or, or whomever and not have to do special, you know, spins for the one company. Obviously, you know, a company like Apple or Samsung, they will, you know, but, but they'd prefer to be able to have that be

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  as versatile as possible. So even when a company has their complete vertical solution, I forget exactly how you phrase it, but you know, creates their own ecosystem, there's still different layers in it. As I said, like the chip manufacturers and other people that are motivated to standardize some of this stuff as well.

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  When you talk about stuff being in the standard and some stuff being built on top of it, and there's always a debate about where the line is, who's in that debate? Who goes, who gets to be in those rooms? Are you all around a whiteboard drawing lines at different heights and like angrily pointing at them? Like who's in the room and what does that debate actually sound like?

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  So the Bluetooth specifications are created by members and there's work groups where various members that are interested in that use case or that spec would participate in. Then also there's the radio work group, uh, work group for hands free in the car, work group, you know, for the low energy audio, just everything that comes out of Bluetooth. There's a work group involved and member companies that have expertise and opinion, for lack of a different word of, of how that should be implemented are sitting in the room and they'll, they'll debate that and they'll contribute to the spec. And then also

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  at the end of the day, it's the board of directors that adopt. The specification and that's when it gets published and companies can start building products based on it. And so the board of directors sets the goals for the specification. You know, these are the scenarios we want to enable the enable. These are the new features we want to enable, stuff like that. And then it goes to the work group. And then when it's done, it comes back to the board of directors to to sign off on. So I mean, that's a way 10,000 level oversimplification of how it's done. But those are the two main groups that are kind of around that table.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  If you will, for what goes in the spec and what doesn't go in the spec and where that line is drawn.

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  So you've got the members, you've got the board of directors, they're talking about different parts of the spec. Just as a consumer, somebody who experiences Bluetooth every day. Is there a part where you're like, all right, the world's great consumer technology and computer companies are going to implement our spec. We don't have to worry about them. The car companies are now going to put Bluetooth radios in their cars. And that's a little dicey and maybe we should go babysit them a little bit. Cause that like, that's where the breakdown is, right? In the actual execution and implementation of the standard. And some companies historically very good at it. Some gigantic category of companies historically very bad at it. How do you make sure that consumer experience stays good?

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that's a difficult one because the consumer experience isn't in the specification itself. And that actually with Bluetooth anyway, is very entrenched within the original rules of the organization and how it was formed, that the user experience not be in the specification, that that's something that

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  Yes, that the companies can do on their own.

• 1:08:31Nilay Patel?

  Why is that?

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  When Bluetooth formed, it was a lot of big companies coming together to do this specification. And all of them had very strong opinions on what the user interface should look like and how it should be. And, you know, one of the things that when I first started working with Bluetooth, I worked for Microsoft and I was on the board of directors. I chaired the board of directors and things like that. And I negotiated, there was part of the team that negotiated the deal for Microsoft to join the Bluetooth SIG. And back in Redmond in the meetings, you know, one direction that I received very loud and clearly is, you know,

• 1:09:17Speaker 04

  some group of other companies is not going to tell us what the user interface in Windows is. And, you know, at one time when I, I went to Ericsson, you know, this was 99, 2000 timeframe. So at that time, Ericsson was a very big cellphone manufacturer. And I had what I thought was a great idea for how Bluetooth should be in the phone and how it should implement with Windows. And some with their head UI guy for phones and give them this idea. And he kind of stares blankly at me and I said, come on, it couldn't take you more than a week to implement this feature.

• 1:09:56Speaker 04

  And he said, no, it'll be six months because it'll take five and a half months for you to convince me to do it. And then two weeks for me to do it. You know, so, so all these companies had very strong impressions of how the UI on the devices that they made and their experts at should work. And, you know, some kid from another company shouldn't come and tell them how it should be. And, you know, when I worked at Microsoft, they wouldn't allow it. Ericsson wouldn't, Nokia sure as heck wouldn't allow it. And so, you know, none of the companies involved back then would allow that.

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  And so to kind of roll back to your question though, one of the things we did do is we had put out. You know, guidelines and the Bluetooth SIG, you you mentioned the car scenario. One of the things we did is we did a consumer focus groups and brought, you know, consumers, regular people that may or may not have ever used Bluetooth and stuck them in a car and stuck them in, you know, many, many different types of cars, not always the same person, but you know, different people in different cars and had them try to pair a phone with the car. And sometimes, as you said, it went very smoothly.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Sometimes it didn't, but there are some very clear things that consumers expected and kind of wanted to follow the flow through and some that the cars did that they weren't expecting at all. And so we were able to put that into a paper and give some guidelines and share that with all the car manufacturers that were members. And that helped some, you know, as you said, they're they're still not all perfect and and things, but I I do think it's better than when cars first started implementing Bluetooth.

• 1:11:49Nilay Patel?

  So you have a PhD or an engineer by training, used to work on the actual wireless standards at Microsoft. Every time I talk to someone in your position or someone who's been in your position as standards body, I come away thinking, oh, this is a politics job. This person had to become a politician because what you're describing is less engineering and way more politics. Is that how you see it, that this is a political job?

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  Well, there's definitely that part of it and you're a salesman who's as well, no doubt about that. But I think, at least in my own experience, having the technical background enabled me to speak to the people that were making the specifications, you know, at the radio level, I understood that level at the upper layers, I understood that level. And I think, at least with Bluetooth and my personal experience, that helped a lot with the specifications. But as you said, with talking with members and press and analysts and stuff, I didn't use that part of my background nearly as much.

• 1:12:58Nilay Patel?

  I want to let Alex and Chris ask some questions to wrap us up, but here's my, my, my final question. I look at the state of Bluetooth today and it can do a lot of things. It has more capabilities than ever, but it's narrowed to the audio use case in almost every circumstance. Right? Like AirPods and Galaxy buds and Pixel buds are all great and they have all these capabilities and that's great. And pairing with your car is great and spatial audio is whatever it is. But the universe of other things Bluetooth could do has been supplanted by other lower power technologies, has been supplanted by things like wifi. Bluetooth and wifi work together now in many cases. Do you see that narrowing or am I missing something big?

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  Well, it, audio was the original killer use case and it went from voice audio to stereo audio. And now it's going stereo audio over the low energy channel. And so audio has been, and I think will continue to be a major, major feature or part of what Bluetooth is and enables. I do think though, in a lot of other devices like the medical, the fitness and things like that, Bluetooth can still be adopted and used there as well. Having the connection to pretty much every smartphone out there is still a big advantage for those other type of use cases and makes some other technologies,

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  at least for the consumer side, harder to enter because you don't have that cell phone connectivity. Now in the industrial world and things like that, where you're doing the entire vertical, you know, in-house, if you will, if you're doing automation on a manufacturing floor, you know, that, that cell phone connection may not be as important because you'll just create your own basically access point or connectivity point for whatever technology you're using. So you use the best technology that's fit for that particular job. So I think that's a harder nut, if you will, for Bluetooth to crack than the more consumer ones where the phone is such a vital component in it.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  So I've been at The Verge for a while and I thought there was a period a few years ago where we often wrote about BLE, low energy, and these beacons. And this notion that you would like walk into a store and the app for like Walmart or Target would like guide you to the aisle or shelf where the thing you wanted was. And that just never really happened. So do you think like there are times where the tech industry just gets maybe too ambitious with Bluetooth and uses it in ways that sound nice in concept, but in practice are a hassle or not really what it's meant for when it comes down to it?

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  Well, you're right, the low-energy beacons, there's a lot of hype around those for a while. And it might have been one of those, if you build it, they will come type of things. But not as many people came as some people had hoped. You know, even back at the beginning, I was talking about the scenarios that you're enabling. You know, I tested with Bluetooth low-energy beacons around a Target. And you know, it'll show you where the item is and map you to it and stuff. But you know, I don't really know how compelling that is. You know, most people can walk around the Target and find this stuff. And part of walking around the Target is the journey that people enjoy when they're shopping.

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  You know, so pulling out your phone and having it do all of that, yeah, maybe has some value, but I don't know if it's really a killer type scenario. So the scenarios have to be good and consumers have to, you know, want them and be willing to use them where the beacon scenario might not have been there. Now, if you easily push good coupons to them and things like that, and it saved them some money, then people might be more inclined to use that sort of application.

• 1:16:52Alex Cranz?

  What element of Bluetooth that you worked on was like just the part you really, really are super proud of and like you would probably bring up in a conversation with people who know nothing about Bluetooth?

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Well, it was mentioned earlier about how Bluetooth and Y-Bree came together and that turned into Bluetooth low-energy and the 4.0 spec. And that whole process and going through and working out the deal for that and getting the specification done, you know, that was really something. And that really set the foundation for what Bluetooth is and became for this last decade, you know, for the next 10 years after that was done. So, you know, that was very good. Very proud of that and how that's turned out.

• 1:17:42Nilay Patel?

  Were you like, I gotta take these Wirebury guys?

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. They, they actually believed that the Bluetooth SIG was probably the best way to get the technology out there as well, rather than recreating everything that the Bluetooth SIG had. Because people, I don't think, realize, and the consumer shouldn't have to realize this, but, you know, creating a standard like that and getting the technology out there takes a lot of time, energy, money, resources, infrastructure, just all these things. And duplicating that for each technology is very wasteful in the industry. And so, being able to bring those two together, you know, saved companies a lot of money, I think, made it easier for the consumer when

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  the actual low energy came out, because it got put into phones right away, because people made dual-mode chipsets right away. And so, it was definitely a win-win for both organizations, for the consumer, for the members, et cetera. So, no, it wasn't like you're going out and saying, you know, we have to just take over these guys.

• 1:18:51Nilay Patel?

  It's a nice low-power wireless spec you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to you.

• 1:18:57Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:18:58Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's wrap it up here. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining us on the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. It would be a crime if I didn't ask this, or listeners would kill me. The joke we've had that a lot of folks, a lot of people who report on consumer technology have for years about Bluetooth is that Bluetooth will be better next year. And that has just always been the answer for a decade-plus of Bluetooth. In the spirit of the holidays, will Bluetooth be better next year?

• 1:19:24Speaker 04

  Maybe. I don't know.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  It's, it's pretty damn good now. And it will continue to do more things.

• 1:19:33Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. Mike, thank you so much for joining the Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. This is great.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  All right, thanks.

• 1:19:44Nilay Patel?

  And with that, The Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular comes to a close. Children are sleeping, our headsets are charging, and Bluetooth... Well, honestly, we don't know if Bluetooth will be better next year, which we'll just have to try again. Thank you for joining us on The Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular. We enjoyed having you. I hope you have an excellent holiday season. There's lots of coverage of Bluetooth on theverge.com. There's lots of coverage of Bluetooth in all of our hearts. You can follow us on the website at theverge.com. We're thinking about what other social platforms you can follow us on, but theverge.com right now is pretty good, so check out theverge.com. We're on it. We're writing about Bluetooth every day. We're writing about the holidays. The Vergecast Bluetooth Holiday Spectacular is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio.

• 1:20:29Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, even just some Bluetooth tips and tricks, you can always email [email protected]. And if you have questions, call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. Send us all your big thoughts, concerns, and questions about the world of tech. That's it for The Vergecast in 2022. Happy holidays, and we'll see you at CES 2023.

• 1:21:01Speaker 09

  Device is now disconnected.

• 1:21:03Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:21:25Speaker 09

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 1:21:49Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented by EY.

• 1:22:05Speaker 10

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