10 ms·

The fact that I get excited about this is actually a good representation much vendor lock there is. We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the

The fact that I get excited about this is actually a good representation much vendor lock there is. We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.

rckt 11mo ago
And even via IR port.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
tormeh 11mo ago
Looks like this is an Apple problem that can ve solved by not using Apple products. Every once in a while I look at some Apple device and think it's nifty. Shortly after I'm made aware of some thing or other that they can't do because Apple just doesn't like standards, open source, or just freedom itself.
- hhh 11mo ago
  Like what?
  - dnissley 11mo ago
    On iPhones you can't install software except through the app store
    - nkozyra 11mo ago
      Well Android is going to be the same way now, too.
      - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
        Certainly not. Google is only mandating signing. That’s already extremely bad but that’s still infinitely better than what Apple offers.
      - stavros 11mo ago
        Nah, they rolles that back.
      - miloignis 11mo ago
        No, that's not true - the change was that you could only install software from verified developers, not only from the app store, and now they've partially walked that back too and "are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified." ( https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-developer-verification-early.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de... )
  - fainpul 11mo ago
    Like sharing your WLAN. It works great between iPhones, if you know how it works and the preconditions are fulfilled (it's undiscoverable). You can't share with Android devices by showing them a QR code – which I would consider the "usual" way and which is easy to do on Android devices. Edit: Here is the procedure I was talking about and all prerequisites for it to work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102635 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102635
    - cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
      iOS hotspots are discoverable by non-Apple devices if you have "Allow Others to Join" enabled and have the Personal Hotspot settings panel open on the iOS device. Otherwise, it's hidden to help prevent unintended connection attempts.
      - rootusrootus 11mo ago
        I suspect they mean sharing the password for a regular wifi network, not running a hotspot.
        Gigachad 11mo ago
        That feature hardly works between iPhones anyway. It’s easier to just open the passwords app and show the QR code.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      It has never worked for me on iOS. Everyone kept saying "I can just share the password" but the prompt never popped up, and there was no way to do anything.
      - rootusrootus 11mo ago
        IIRC it only works if you are on their contact list. And I think you need to be in the settings app. Something like that. It's a handy feature but Apple could make it easier to understand, and they could do way better communicating why it isn't working, when it does not work.
  - bigyabai 11mo ago
    Bluetooth LDAC would be cool.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  - bhelkey 11mo ago
    Lets just zoom into a single use case. The ability of the user to buy a 3rd Party watch that integrates with their phone: * Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party watches to send text messages. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so. * Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party to take actions on notifications. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so. * If you want to use the internet on your watch, you must: 1) install a 3rd party app, 2) keep that app open. Closing the app closes the connection to the internet. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction. * 3rd Party watches cannot detect if you are using your phone. This means that they will notify users of notifications even if the user is looking at the notification. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction. * Apple does not have ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like Android. * Apple restricts making 3rd Party App Stores. This makes it difficult to make a community of people making watch faces. All points come from Pebble's blog [1]. This is just a single type of integration that Apple intentionally makes difficult, there are many others (e.g. 3rd Party Photos App, ...) [1] https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
  - TheDong 11mo ago
    let me list some things I can do on android which I cannot do on iOS: * Install real mobile firefox, including installing firefox addons I've built for myself. Firefox on iOS is a safari skin * Install web browser security updates without also updating my entire OS. On Android, firefox is an app. on iOS, safari is a part of the OS that cannot be updated independently * Install an open source app my friend built without paying $100/year or having to reload it every 7 days * Build and install an app without owning a macbook or other macOS device, just using linux * Filter notifications to my garmin smartwatch by-app * Change the messenger app that handles SMS * Have a notification center that syncs between linux and my phone (i.e. KDE Connect doesn't work https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-ios#known-behavior-and-problems https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-ios#known-behavior... ) * Have reliably working file-syncing (i.e. syncthing for iOS) because background tasks are something you can do well in android, and barely at all in iOS * Have access to the source code to debug and fix problems * Have the ability to flash my own custom kernel / rom (not all android devices, but many) .... Really, not being able to write and install my own app without paying apple $100, and without owning a macbook is the big dealbreaker, followed by iOS restricting APIs needed to do all sorts of things like proper notification handling, proper NFC, etc etc. It amazes me that so many people on the "hacker news" forum are okay with their primary computing device being wildly hostile to the hacker spirit, to the desire to tinker around for fun and learn and hack on things.
- excalibur 11mo ago
  It's not enough to not use Apple products. You either have to convince everyone around you to not use them either, or you have to have compatability.
creaturemachine 11mo ago
Ever since the iphone apple has been trying to make you believe files aren't a thing.
- sussmannbaka 11mo ago
  Im not sure if Android has caught up but the iOS file explorer app is excellent.
  - bigyabai 11mo ago
    I'm pretty sure that iOS only has a file explorer app because Android supported it. There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.
    - kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago
      To be fair, Android lacked a stock file browser for much of its existence.
      - stavros 11mo ago
        The difference is that iOS still doesn't show you the files on your device. It only shows you files in a small area.
        wkat4242 11mo ago
        I love Android but Android does that too. Apps have their internal storage area which you can't access unfortunately (not without root anyway). Nor system files.
        stavros 11mo ago
        When I had an iPhone (a few months ago), there was no way for apps to see files in the filesystem. I wanted to play some music and I had to copy it over to each of the music player apps separately. Is that not the case any more?
kotaKat 11mo ago
I miss being able to plug my phone (of any kind) in and getting it mounted as a drive letter. Android misses the mark so much with MTP and iPhone… waves frantically at iTunes. (At least, in a weird bizarre twist, the iPhone’s Files app is actually really useful for me. I find myself formatting flash drives, copying stuff from network shares, etc, all from my phone and it’s so nifty to have nearly-first-class features there.)
- cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
  MTP is really, really bad. I have a better experience managing files on iOS devices using Linux than I do managing files on Android devices using macOS simply because available MTP implementations are so awful. I know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Like it wouldn't bother me a bit if Android just locked the device and put it in "file transfer mode" when it's mounted on a computer, similar to how iPods used to and how Kobo e-readers do now. It'd be worth the universal robust multi-platform support.
  - Dylan16807 11mo ago
    Or they could have figured out a new version of MTP that supports basic features like concurrent access and normal metadata. Or they could have gone for SMB/NFS over a virtual network link. Anything but this horrible interface they've doubled down on.
    - iggldiggl 11mo ago
      > I know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Depending on whether the respective kernel supported it, you were still unofficially able to switch removable SD cards into mass storage mode (though only with a rooted phone), although somehow, even if I remembered to officially unmount the SD card from Android first, it somehow still often led to mild filesystem corruption (luckily never anything fatal, though) that required regular chkdsk-usage. > Or they could have figured out a new version of MTP that supports basic features like concurrent access and normal metadata. Or they could have gone for SMB/NFS over a virtual network link. My current phone no longer supports the above mass storage mode-hack for the removable SD card, which annoyed me enough that I actually wrote my own SMB server app (https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid), because all other SMB servers for Android that I'm aware of were either outright broken, unsupported, buggy or fiddly to use. Sadly the only open source Java-based SMB server only supports SMBv1, so you're stuck with that, and you still need root for full comfort, but within those limitations it works quite nicely.
Gys 11mo ago
> We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out. Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone?
- msh 11mo ago
  I don’t know about blackberry, but it worked fine between feature phone Nokias and windows pdas / phones (before windows phone 7).
- marcodiego 11mo ago
  Most of what are called "dumbphones" allowed easy file sharing over bluetooth. Even the cheapest ones.
- kcb 11mo ago
  Yea, there's a Bluetooth protocol for it called OBEX.
- _shantaram 11mo ago
  > Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone? Yes, it was part of the Bluetooth file transfer spec[0] and possible between any two devices that implemented it correctly. 0: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer-profile-1-3/ https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer...
  - input_sh 11mo ago
    You could do it even before phones came with Bluetooth via Infrared. Granted, the two phones had to be placed perfectly for the IR sensors to connect, if you moved them the file transfer would break. Bluetooth was a huge upgrade because you no longer needed to do that.
  - magicalhippo 11mo ago
    I recall getting very surprised when my sister got one of the first Windows phones (one with the tile menu) and it didn’t support this feature.
kevincox 11mo ago
It's really an embarrassment to our society that it took this long. And still only by seemingly by reverse engineering with no cooperation from Apple.
- geraldhh 11mo ago
  the underlying tech seems to be based upon awdl principles contributed by apple
pavo-etc 11mo ago
You can still send files over bluetooth on devices that aren't iPhones. Even Macs support this
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
tguvot 11mo ago
i am still sending files over bluetooth between android phones or between phones and computer
nebula8804 11mo ago
Vendor lock has been here forever. Here is a more hilarious attempt to break Vendor lock from the 90s!: https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98 https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98 Things were more fun back then. Now Google vs Apple is so BORING! :D
joshuaissac 11mo ago
Until reading this thread, I had no idea that iPhones did not support Bluetooth for file transfer. I had expected comments like "we can do this with an entry-level phone via Bluetooth already". On the other hand, with the ubiquity of always-on Internet access and cheap data plans, in most situations where Bluetooth would have been used, I now see WhatsApp being used instead.
geraldhh 11mo ago
> send files over Bluetooth kind of worked with flip-phone resolutions, but tiresome with multi-megabyte pictures of today

The fact that I get excited about this is actually a good representation much vendor lock there is. We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.

rckt 11mo ago

And even via IR port.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

tormeh 11mo ago

Looks like this is an Apple problem that can ve solved by not using Apple products. Every once in a while I look at some Apple device and think it's nifty. Shortly after I'm made aware of some thing or other that they can't do because Apple just doesn't like standards, open source, or just freedom itself.

hhh 11mo ago
Like what?
- dnissley 11mo ago
  On iPhones you can't install software except through the app store
  - nkozyra 11mo ago
    Well Android is going to be the same way now, too.
    - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
      Certainly not. Google is only mandating signing. That’s already extremely bad but that’s still infinitely better than what Apple offers.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      Nah, they rolles that back.
    - miloignis 11mo ago
      No, that's not true - the change was that you could only install software from verified developers, not only from the app store, and now they've partially walked that back too and "are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified." ( https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-developer-verification-early.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de... )
- fainpul 11mo ago
  Like sharing your WLAN. It works great between iPhones, if you know how it works and the preconditions are fulfilled (it's undiscoverable). You can't share with Android devices by showing them a QR code – which I would consider the "usual" way and which is easy to do on Android devices. Edit: Here is the procedure I was talking about and all prerequisites for it to work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102635 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102635
  - cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
    iOS hotspots are discoverable by non-Apple devices if you have "Allow Others to Join" enabled and have the Personal Hotspot settings panel open on the iOS device. Otherwise, it's hidden to help prevent unintended connection attempts.
    - rootusrootus 11mo ago
      I suspect they mean sharing the password for a regular wifi network, not running a hotspot.
      - Gigachad 11mo ago
        That feature hardly works between iPhones anyway. It’s easier to just open the passwords app and show the QR code.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    It has never worked for me on iOS. Everyone kept saying "I can just share the password" but the prompt never popped up, and there was no way to do anything.
    - rootusrootus 11mo ago
      IIRC it only works if you are on their contact list. And I think you need to be in the settings app. Something like that. It's a handy feature but Apple could make it easier to understand, and they could do way better communicating why it isn't working, when it does not work.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  Bluetooth LDAC would be cool.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- bhelkey 11mo ago
  Lets just zoom into a single use case. The ability of the user to buy a 3rd Party watch that integrates with their phone: * Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party watches to send text messages. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so. * Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party to take actions on notifications. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so. * If you want to use the internet on your watch, you must: 1) install a 3rd party app, 2) keep that app open. Closing the app closes the connection to the internet. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction. * 3rd Party watches cannot detect if you are using your phone. This means that they will notify users of notifications even if the user is looking at the notification. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction. * Apple does not have ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like Android. * Apple restricts making 3rd Party App Stores. This makes it difficult to make a community of people making watch faces. All points come from Pebble's blog [1]. This is just a single type of integration that Apple intentionally makes difficult, there are many others (e.g. 3rd Party Photos App, ...) [1] https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
- TheDong 11mo ago
  let me list some things I can do on android which I cannot do on iOS: * Install real mobile firefox, including installing firefox addons I've built for myself. Firefox on iOS is a safari skin * Install web browser security updates without also updating my entire OS. On Android, firefox is an app. on iOS, safari is a part of the OS that cannot be updated independently * Install an open source app my friend built without paying $100/year or having to reload it every 7 days * Build and install an app without owning a macbook or other macOS device, just using linux * Filter notifications to my garmin smartwatch by-app * Change the messenger app that handles SMS * Have a notification center that syncs between linux and my phone (i.e. KDE Connect doesn't work https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-ios#known-behavior-and-problems https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-ios#known-behavior... ) * Have reliably working file-syncing (i.e. syncthing for iOS) because background tasks are something you can do well in android, and barely at all in iOS * Have access to the source code to debug and fix problems * Have the ability to flash my own custom kernel / rom (not all android devices, but many) .... Really, not being able to write and install my own app without paying apple $100, and without owning a macbook is the big dealbreaker, followed by iOS restricting APIs needed to do all sorts of things like proper notification handling, proper NFC, etc etc. It amazes me that so many people on the "hacker news" forum are okay with their primary computing device being wildly hostile to the hacker spirit, to the desire to tinker around for fun and learn and hack on things.
excalibur 11mo ago
It's not enough to not use Apple products. You either have to convince everyone around you to not use them either, or you have to have compatability.

creaturemachine 11mo ago

Ever since the iphone apple has been trying to make you believe files aren't a thing.

sussmannbaka 11mo ago
Im not sure if Android has caught up but the iOS file explorer app is excellent.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  I'm pretty sure that iOS only has a file explorer app because Android supported it. There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.
  - kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago
    To be fair, Android lacked a stock file browser for much of its existence.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      The difference is that iOS still doesn't show you the files on your device. It only shows you files in a small area.
      - wkat4242 11mo ago
        I love Android but Android does that too. Apps have their internal storage area which you can't access unfortunately (not without root anyway). Nor system files.
        stavros 11mo ago
        When I had an iPhone (a few months ago), there was no way for apps to see files in the filesystem. I wanted to play some music and I had to copy it over to each of the music player apps separately. Is that not the case any more?

kotaKat 11mo ago

I miss being able to plug my phone (of any kind) in and getting it mounted as a drive letter. Android misses the mark so much with MTP and iPhone… waves frantically at iTunes. (At least, in a weird bizarre twist, the iPhone’s Files app is actually really useful for me. I find myself formatting flash drives, copying stuff from network shares, etc, all from my phone and it’s so nifty to have nearly-first-class features there.)

cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
MTP is really, really bad. I have a better experience managing files on iOS devices using Linux than I do managing files on Android devices using macOS simply because available MTP implementations are so awful. I know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Like it wouldn't bother me a bit if Android just locked the device and put it in "file transfer mode" when it's mounted on a computer, similar to how iPods used to and how Kobo e-readers do now. It'd be worth the universal robust multi-platform support.
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  Or they could have figured out a new version of MTP that supports basic features like concurrent access and normal metadata. Or they could have gone for SMB/NFS over a virtual network link. Anything but this horrible interface they've doubled down on.
  - iggldiggl 11mo ago
    > I know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Depending on whether the respective kernel supported it, you were still unofficially able to switch removable SD cards into mass storage mode (though only with a rooted phone), although somehow, even if I remembered to officially unmount the SD card from Android first, it somehow still often led to mild filesystem corruption (luckily never anything fatal, though) that required regular chkdsk-usage. > Or they could have figured out a new version of MTP that supports basic features like concurrent access and normal metadata. Or they could have gone for SMB/NFS over a virtual network link. My current phone no longer supports the above mass storage mode-hack for the removable SD card, which annoyed me enough that I actually wrote my own SMB server app (https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid), because all other SMB servers for Android that I'm aware of were either outright broken, unsupported, buggy or fiddly to use. Sadly the only open source Java-based SMB server only supports SMBv1, so you're stuck with that, and you still need root for full comfort, but within those limitations it works quite nicely.

Gys 11mo ago

> We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out. Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone?

msh 11mo ago
I don’t know about blackberry, but it worked fine between feature phone Nokias and windows pdas / phones (before windows phone 7).
marcodiego 11mo ago
Most of what are called "dumbphones" allowed easy file sharing over bluetooth. Even the cheapest ones.
kcb 11mo ago
Yea, there's a Bluetooth protocol for it called OBEX.
_shantaram 11mo ago
> Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone? Yes, it was part of the Bluetooth file transfer spec[0] and possible between any two devices that implemented it correctly. 0: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer-profile-1-3/ https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer...
- input_sh 11mo ago
  You could do it even before phones came with Bluetooth via Infrared. Granted, the two phones had to be placed perfectly for the IR sensors to connect, if you moved them the file transfer would break. Bluetooth was a huge upgrade because you no longer needed to do that.
- magicalhippo 11mo ago
  I recall getting very surprised when my sister got one of the first Windows phones (one with the tile menu) and it didn’t support this feature.

kevincox 11mo ago

It's really an embarrassment to our society that it took this long. And still only by seemingly by reverse engineering with no cooperation from Apple.

geraldhh 11mo ago
the underlying tech seems to be based upon awdl principles contributed by apple

pavo-etc 11mo ago

You can still send files over bluetooth on devices that aren't iPhones. Even Macs support this

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

tguvot 11mo ago

i am still sending files over bluetooth between android phones or between phones and computer

nebula8804 11mo ago

Vendor lock has been here forever. Here is a more hilarious attempt to break Vendor lock from the 90s!: https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98 https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98 Things were more fun back then. Now Google vs Apple is so BORING! :D

joshuaissac 11mo ago

Until reading this thread, I had no idea that iPhones did not support Bluetooth for file transfer. I had expected comments like "we can do this with an entry-level phone via Bluetooth already". On the other hand, with the ubiquity of always-on Internet access and cheap data plans, in most situations where Bluetooth would have been used, I now see WhatsApp being used instead.

geraldhh 11mo ago

> send files over Bluetooth kind of worked with flip-phone resolutions, but tiresome with multi-megabyte pictures of today