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From a bit further down the page > Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook > Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to
by isoprophlex 11mo ago
From a bit further down the page
> Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook
> Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features!
I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in.
EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine
- matwood 11mo ago> Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices I've had almost all of the versions of AirPods and AirPod Pros and they have connected to non-Apple devices just fine.
- bartvk 11mo agoYup, I've got an old pair connected to my Steam Deck. Works fine.
- realusername 11mo agoPersonally I've tried the ones of my wife on my Galaxy S23 and I have frequent audio cuts, since it's the only Bluetooth device I've ever experienced that, there's some shenanigans for sure in their firmware.
- maccard 11mo agoI had a slightly older galaxy as my last android phone, and had this problem with the galaxy buds and with the anker ones I got to replace them. My experience with audio on android (Samsung and pixel) was overwhelmingly “this sucks” so I’m more inclined to blame android than apple here
- realusername 11mo agoPersonally I never had any audio issues at all apart from pairing (but I also had this issue on iPhone, this is a general case of Bluetooth pairing sucks)
- esskay 11mo agoUsed mine with a Galaxy S22 for about ~6 months, zero connectivity issues. Also given others also are saying they've had no issues I'd say it's pretty fair to assume this was an isolated problem unrelated to the topic at hand.
- cenamus 11mo agoYeah, connected a pair to a 2011 phone with Android 2.x (Gingerbread or something along those lines) just fine. Sound quality was even pretty good to my ears, whatever that bluetooth standard could push through the air
- bamboozled 11mo agoI would say they not only just connect, they work perfectly. I can't say the same for Bose and similar devices.
- naIak 11mo ago[flagged]
- hopelite 11mo agoI’ve long found that whole feud and dynamic odd, like humanity could learn some major things about inter-group dynamics and even psychology by studying and unlocking what it’s all about. You have Apple users just happily going about their day, paying a premium because the things just work well enough together to the point that even the slightest hiccup feels like a major event, but the devices just meld into the background of their life and work. Meanwhile you have Android, Linux, Windows zealots just brooding in dark corners, audibly grinding their teeth over the happiness and ease in which Apple users go about their day, not having to tinker and adjust and fix things and hunt down drivers and check compatibility and relearn every new device they come in contact with and the 38 different paths to accomplish simple tasks, seething with anger that Apple users don’t want to struggle and suffer too. It’s just a bit of humor. I repent, I repent. You baby is just as pretty as all the other babies.
- socalgal2 11mo agoMy experience, Apple people believe Apple products are flawless and when presented with a problem will find every reason to excuse Apple or say "I never do that". User: Ran into a printing issue on my Mac Fan: I never print, my Mac experience is flawless User: Screen Mirror breaks all the time Fan: I never use Screen Mirror. My Mac experience is it's flawless User: For some reason my Airpods lose audio once in a while. The Mac shows they are connected. It shows the volume is up. It shows the video is playing. I end up having to reboot Fan: You must be holding them wrong. An old example, a friend with a Mac had trouble connecting to a samba share and blamed windows. It was documented that that was bug in Apple's implementation of the samba protocol. He still blamed the non-apple device. (this was like 2006) I still see remnents of that today. Mac networking sucks (have 2 M1 Macs) as well as a windows pc. The PC networking is solid, connected to share, it never disconnects. The Macs disconnect constantly when switching VPNs etc. The Finder also often locks up. It's also noticablely slower to browse folders with lots of files.
- thewebguyd 11mo agoYeah. I have a set of APP 3 (and previously the 2s) and both worked just fine with my Windows laptop, I use them daily with it and even bounce between Windows & my Apple Devices just fine.
- exitb 11mo agoAirPods can connect to any device and perform on par with other Bluetooth headphones. This is about availability of special features which require a dedicated driver non-Apple devices are not expected to have.
- kakacik 11mo agoThis is patently incorrect. Wife switched from iphone 13 mini to samsung s24, and airpods pro 2nd gen immediately started behaving extremely annoyingly to the point of becoming completely useless for any serious use and she just gave them away to her sister which still is on apple, although she loved them before. Literally all other earpieces work flawlessly with that phone including dirt cheap chinese stuff, apart from apple. Now somebody could come and claim multi trillion company couldnt just nail that pesky bluetooth protocol well, but everybody else can do it better than them, including 15 bucks products. Its all by design. They clearly dont need hardware revenue to have products who can compete on open market, they need their closed ecosystem revenue, hence these dirty practices. There is hopefully a billion or ten lawsuit in the making by courts with balls, ie EU. All the downvotes in the world won't change above.
- realusername 11mo agoI can also confirm the problem on a s23, airpods are the only Bluetooth devices which I've experienced cuts in the middle of the audio, similar to an old school radio
- yxab 11mo agoDoes turning off the AirPods automatic device switching feature make any difference?
- realusername 11mo agoI didn't try but that's a good idea.
- dotancohen 11mo ago
- jb1991 11mo agoThis sounds like you were making some guesses, which turn out to be incorrect. You are saying that AirPods cannot connect to non-Apple devices, which is untrue. They function as regular Bluetooth headphones for any device.
- hu3 11mo agoThey don't function as a regular bt headphone. They don't even report battery life among other artificially blocked basic functions.
- dwaite 11mo agoWhich of the three battery level values should be reported in the one slot Bluetooth provides?
- GrinningFool 11mo agoIt seems the the right answer shouldn't be "none of them" though.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoSo which one should it be?
- isodev 11mo agoThey’re being slammed, the DMA is not going away. Just a few weeks ago, Apple had their latest court hearing. https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20251015-01.en.html https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20251015-01.en.html
- wkat4242 11mo agoWell, the EU is trying to undermine its own GDPR now in an attempt to suck up to Trump :( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45882203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45882203 And DMA/DSA are also getting nerfed :(
- isodev 11mo agoThese are both very long-term games. I think preventing a trade war is definitely better on the short term so I'm not opposed to a softer flavour of these directives (it's not permanent after all, they can be adapted again). Than trying to push all the levers at the same time.
- wkat4242 11mo agoI don't agree there. These tariffs hurt the American people a lot more than they hurt us. All this is pretty much inspired by the fears of the big car companies. But we're also buying a lot less American cars, Tesla for example has been decimated in Europe. And besides them there's only really Ford. Besides Trump constantly changes the rules. For example with his 'trade deficit' he's only looking at goods, not services. When you consider the huge amount of money going to Microsoft, AWS, Google, there's not really any deficit. Trump just makes it all up as he goes along. You can't really respond seriously to that because you don't know what will happen tomorrow, he could change his mind again.
- asteroidburger 11mo agoThe referenced Bluetooth bug on the Github readme seems like a pretty good reason. "We don't want to work around or deal with the bugs on other platforms" seems like a reasonable position.
- vasco 11mo agoThis is anti-competitive measures, it's not like it's the only thing they do like this. The charging cables were the same.
- monerozcash 11mo agoIf this is about lightning, what connector do you think apple should have used? USB-C came out long after lightning.
- formerly_proven 11mo ago> USB-C [Aug 2014] came out long after lightning [Sep 2012]. 1 year 11 months :) The old 30-pin connector before Lightning came from 2003. Meanwhile it took until 2023 for iPhones to use USB-C. 30-pin 2003 - 2012 (2014) Lighting 2012 - 2023 (2025) USB-C AAPL utter mess - iPhone 2023 - USB-C RoW 2014 -
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoHow was USB C on Apple a “mess” when it came out on the iPhone 14? It supported all of the standard USB protocols - video, networking, mass storage, audio etc.
- formerly_proven 11mo agoThe transition to USB-C was spread out across product lines over many years, hence "mess". The iPhone is on a separate line in the table.
- 11mo ago
- dmitrygr 11mo agoThis is used to prevent devices that don’t know about those features from accidentally triggering them as they are not per spec (spec lacks way to do many things AirPods do). And AirPods do connect to non Apple devices. They are just limited to doing what BT spec allows and no more Please stop spreading FUD
- praseodym 11mo agoMultipoint connectivity is part of the spec but apparently AirPods only support it if you pretend to be an Apple device.
- dmitrygr 11mo agopart of which spec revision? what date did it come out? and what date did airpods come out. compare the two dates. i'll wait...
- Zetaphor 11mo agoThe multipoint spec was added to Bluetooth 4.0 in 2010: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/core-specification-4-0/ https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/core-specific... The Battery Service 1.0 spec was officially adopted in 2011: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/battery-service-1-0/?hl=en-US https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/battery-servi... The first airpods were released in 2016... Please consider that simping for a trillion dollar company might actually not be in your best personal interests...
- dmitrygr 11mo agoWhat do you mean by "multipoint spec"? I have written a few BT stacks (you might have even used one I wrote at one point or another) and I have no idea what you mean by that phrase. Please cite a section of the spec or proper name of what you are talking about.
- 11mo ago
- BenFranklin100 11mo agoNo idea what you’re talking about. I’ve connected airpods easily to over a dozen devices without a hitch.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 11mo agoThis should indeed be reported as illegal product tying to regulators (U.S. FTC/EU Competition commission/others?) so that Apple is legally deterred from breaking this interoperability effort with future AirPods updates.
- mgh95 11mo agoWorse, now device manufacturers can now make their devices identify as "apple" out of the box and advertise it as "compatibility with Apple AirPods features X, Y, X" and be legally permissible. It's basically the consequence Google v. Oracle and the cases leading to it.
- monocasa 11mo agoI think that's against the Bluetooth spec, and if you do that you won't be certified.
- russianGuy83829 11mo agolike every browser identifying as Mozilla in the user agent
- mytailorisrich 11mo agoWhat makes this illegal product tying under specific laws?
- montagg 11mo agoIt’s, hilariously, the opposite: the exposure of this idea makes every other product better and Apple can’t change it (until they do). Product tying is not a thing you can bypass. This is idea is independent of whether Apple’s strategy is good or bad, legal or not. Product tying can’t be undermined, or it’s not actually a problem.
- BoredPositron 11mo agoI still don't see the illegal part. I am in VFX and have three dongles connected to use specific software packages...
- KolibriFly 11mo agoIt's not innovation, it's ecosystem control disguised as premium experience
- rvnx 11mo agoIronically this is the main reason I did not buy AirPods for my Android phone, because they do not support this multi-device, nor advanced features on Android. If they would be smart, they would financially support this project, as it is going to bring more sales, from users who anyway wouldn't switch to iPhone.
- tripzilch 11mo agoEspecially blocking hearing aids features for people who need those should be criminal
- Zetaphor 11mo agoFinancially gatekeeping access to vital medical resources is par for the course here in the US
- happyopossum 11mo agoHearing aids are highly regulated in many markets, as they are medical devices. Not building and getting certification / approval doe software to support every operating system is far from ”criminal”
- gumby271 11mo agoI think the point is that selling a medical device that also requires you to use that vendors mobile device or lose access to them is just a little scummy. My motivation to keep using an iPhone shouldn't be that I'd need to buy new hearing aids if I left. Apple knows how this works, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
- Vegemeister 11mo agoA set of airpods + the Minimum Viable iPhone to configure the them to work as hearing aids is way cheaper than standalone hearing aids. Regulatory fetishism around "medical devices" is exactly what enabled hearing aids to become a racket and to remain one long after the relevant electronics became a mass-produced consumer product.
- jjkaczor 11mo agoPlus - the medical ones are horrible to use with an iPhone - barely enough volume for watching media - and music has absolutely no bass... (plus, they regularly "forget" their bluetooth sync connections...)
- tiahura 11mo agoI hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Are we really at the point where people expect big brother to handle our headphone issues?
- neop1x 11mo ago>> I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. They should be slammed by Bluetooth body and forbidden to use bluetooth technology for hurting interoperability.
- robertoandred 11mo ago> Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices They’ve always been able to. The ignorance of Apple haters never ceases to amaze.
- mattnewton 11mo agoIdk, this is kinda like changing the user agent string to chrome for another browser to show that you have feature parity - it’s a hack but there aren’t good ways to signal which devices support some features of the AirPods. They can and should do better though by android.