So Comcast has given me a year of Starz to compensate me for the fact that they couldn't do a deal with the NFL channel. Hah! Joke's on them! The only football I watch is the Super Bowl, and then only for the commercials (really), but I do enjoy a movie now and then. The fact that Starz seems to have mostly crappy films on heavy rotation is of no consequence; after all, it's free!
But I did sit down to watch the Adam Sandler epic You Don't Mess with the Zohan recently, and found it, well, just awful. OK, mostly awful - there is one priceless line in there, when Mariah Carey (yes, she of the alleged five-octave range) says, "I can never figure that Bluetooth s**t out". OK, then - I wonder how many divas, and just plain regular folk, still have that problem. As I've written over the years, I never thought much of the Bluetooth radio, which is now obsolete except for a huge installed base and latent demand from headset vendors, but I do like the Bluetooth apps. To be fair to Ms. Carey, though, the quality of Bluetooth implementations has varied widely, with most of those I've tried difficult to get working and less than intuitive to use.
Still, to see a wireless technology enshrined into popular culture (as Wi-Fi has also been, oddly enough by the same Ms. Carey) like this brings a nice warm glow to my heart. Or is that just me absorbing RF? More on that topic, once again, shortly.
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
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Bluetooth obsolete? How so?
Bluetooth obsolete? How so? If you're thinking Wi-Fi Direct is going to be the executioner, not everybody agrees.
We'll see...
I've predicted that Wi-Fi will be broadly influential and perhaps even dominant in WPAN and similar apps, from headsets to sensor netwand orks and RFID. It's a question of cost more than performance - Wi-Fi chips (even single-stream .11n) will be very, very inexpensive and cost-effective. It's a question at this point of software at the MAC layer and above, and progress (like Wi-Fi Direct) is being made here.
And, believe me, I know not everyone agrees. That's what makes this planet so interesting. But I stand by what I said - expect to see lots of Wi-Fi in traditionally Bluetooth applications in the future - perhaps augmented by that terrific Bluetooth software, assuming that it can be produced in a reliable, interoperable, and easy-to-use form that even Ms. Carey can understand.
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