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report from macosxrumors

As reported on Mac4Ever , a French Mac site, France Info (a French radio) has a scoop from an interview with Motorola’s car product manager, Bogdan Nedelcou who reveals Apple is going to add Bluetooth wireless capability to the next generation of iPods. We can read the following on the French radio’s web site (translation from French) : “Motorola will soon release a system allowing to listen to your personnal communications or to music from your iPod through your car’s speakers. To do this, you won’t even need to connect any wire. Actually, this is a scoop : Apple could release a bluetooth enabled iPod soon, according to Bogdan Nedelcou, car product manager at Motorola”. Let’s hope Mr. Jobs won’t get too cross when he’ll learn about these revelations.

this must mean that the 5G iPods are not far off ?

[Luca]

Bluetooth doesn't have enough bandwidth to handle non-compressed music. It's basically limited to 1 megabit per second - fine for MP3s and MP4s with a maximum bit rate of 320 kilobits, but not enough for lossless audio formats like Apple Lossless or AIFF.

I guess it could work, but you should be aware of that limitation. Wireless networking (wifi, 802.11b/g, whatever you want to call it) might be a better solution, but that in turn draws more power. It would probably be a better choice as long as it's an option that you can turn on and off. In fact, I think it's probably more likely that there will simply be a third-party wireless adapter for the iPod that only draws power when it's plugged in.

[zman2005]

what a smart guy, i wish tehre was a way u could lease products, b/c every 7months something bigger and better comes out and i ALWAYS want it.

[baaron]

Even the new Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR thingy??

[defaultmike]

yeah, wouldn't the bluetooth 2.0 addition to the PB line be an indication that it'd be the standard used on the new iPods, and wouldn't it be fast enough to stream lossless? Regardless, I think Apple wouldn't mind not being able to stream lossless that much...

[Luca]

Yeah, CD audio is about 1.3 megabits per second, so Bluetooth 2.0 (which supposedly triples bandwidth to about 3 megabits) should be able to handle it.

[SonOfSylvanus]

*Crosses fingers, incants...*

Bluetooth headphones, bluetooth headphones... PLEASE... bluetooth headphones...

[del-uks]

C'mon guys, it's time to move on... forget about Bluetooth... Apple should seriously consider UWB (http://www.ultrawidebandplanet.com/)... hundreds of Mbps!...

What the hell does Apple want us to do with BT 2.0 ?

[Robo]

It'd be cool to sync the iPod with the Powerbook with BT 2.0. It'd be really, really slow, but who cares? It'd be wireless!!!

Oh, and BlueTooth headphones would totally rock, as long as they weren't earbuds. Hell, I'd pay Apple's outrageous price for them.

[Wraven]

Originally Posted by Roboman It'd be cool to sync the iPod with the Powerbook with BT 2.0. It'd be really, really slow, but who cares? It'd be wireless!!! The Mac mini BT module is just BT 1.0, right? Bummer.

Yes it is only BT 1.0. For now???

[micmoo]

what looks VERY cool is the moto statement talking about some kind of doc for a car, that would hold the ipod and a cell phone, and let the cell phone use the build in sound system of the car via bluetooth somehow, and the ipod to stream the music to the stereo via bluetooth. This would be sweet, as my new Nisan Pathfinder has only a CD changer, wiht no audio inputs on the front, so besides using FM transmitter which i dont like, i cant use my ipod... This would be a product I would buy in a heartbeat! I think ThinkSecret has the info on the Moto quote...

[JayReding]

The problem with BT is that it has a relatively low market penetration, and it's slow. If Apple can add BT without adding to the cost or size of the iPod it might be nice, but if it comes at a cost or size premium I don't see it as such a big value-added feature...

[sadida]

I posted the following to my blog on February 2nd. It seems relevant to the topic, so I thought some may enjoy reading it.

Bluetooth 2.0 is for iPods

I'm going to start a rumor, right here and now. There has been much speculation in the past about Bluetooth (or some other wireless technology) in the iPod. So far, we haven't seen anything. I think that Bluetooth 2.0 is going to change that.

In case you missed it, Apple just updated the PowerBook line and added Bluetooth 2.0. They even updated their Bluetooth page to reflect the introduction of 2.0. Apple is the first to have a Bluetooth 2.0 product that I'm aware of and that's a big deal.

One of the biggest gripes folks have had (I'm not one of them - another post) with Bluetooth has been the speed. Bluetooth up to version 1.2 had a 1 Mbps theoretical, and roughly 723 kbps actual, possible, transfer speed. Whether or not you got near that number depended on lots of things, but we'll save that for another day. With 2.0, the spec has been upped to 3 Mbps. That's triple the speed for those still reaching for their calculators. Three times as much isn't spectacular, but it will help.

The files are huge dummy!
Yes, I realize that there still isn't a great amount of bandwidth when you are comparing against FireWire, but I did some quick real world testing. I used a bare bones 12" iBook which is the cheapest one you can buy right now, plus Bluetooth and WiFi. On the other end, I used a 2 year old Dell something-or-other running Microsoft's Bluetooth stack in XP SP2. The iBook was using built-in Bluetooth. The Dell used the Microsoft dongle that comes with their Wireless Desktop for Bluetooth.

I picked a song, and I even picked one you've probably heard of, U2's "Beautiful Day". This track was purchased from the iTMS and weighed in at 3.92 MB. I ran some transfers of that file both from the iBook to the Dell and vice versa. On average, I got transfer rates of about 43.5 KBps for transfer times of about a minute and a half. That isn't all that great, especially if you are going to transfer more than a few songs, but once we cut that in a third, we start to approach something usable.

Loading up a new album every so often would now be tolerable over Bluetooth. Even if you stick to wires for the music files, certainly you'd love Bluetooth for iSyncing your Address Book, calendar, and notes files. I know I would. Transferring those items would be, dare I say, fast!

The audio.
You might not know it, but Bluetooth can do more than crappy GSM audio. There are products now emerging that provide stereo audio over Bluetooth. I'm looking forward to ditching one more cable, especially that one to my headphones that knocks over my Mountain Dew all the time.

Finally, Apple is clearly leading the way with Bluetooth on the desktop. Their stack implementation is far better than any I have used, and if you know me, you know that means something. The fact that they already have a strong base in Bluetooth and now Bluetooth 2.0 means that a wireless iPod can't be all that far off. Even they think they are great. Check out these quotes from their Bluetooth page.


"As the first company to certify a system supporting Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (enhanced data rate) specification with the Bluetooth Qualification Board, Apple continues to popularize Bluetooth technology."


"Apple’s Bluetooth implementation is the latest in a series of bold strategic moves that have caused tectonic shifts in the computer industry — and greatly benefited customers."


The iPod has to evolve somehow. You can only go so long putting in bigger hard drives. Hopefully wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 2.0 will be part of the next generation. I can't wait.

[+++]

Bluetooth headphones would be a godsend. I cannot even imagine how cool that would be... as long as they don't end up the size of those inear things in the original star trek <<shudder>>

I'd probably lose them within an hour though.

[baaron]

UWB! Faster than FireWire! Larger range than 802.1x! (So far) Sign me up! :smokey:

Hmm.... How many different frequencies does bluetooth have? Given Apple's ability to successfully market whatever they want, these would probably be a huge hit. 20 iPod users within 50 feet of each other. Would this be a problem??? If so, is it fixable???

[nomorewindows]

I would be all over bluetooth headphones like stink on poop. I sync my Palm with bluetooth and LOVE not using a cradle or cable or any other crap.

[defaultmike]

man, I wish they'd make headphones that are tiny. I realize that ones the size of the earbuds aren't really pssible, but if they could get close to that... man! I just don't want the big, bulky, geeky ones.