iOS 6 Bluetooth problems

I have a iPhone 3GS and since updating to iOS 6, I can't pair to my Bluetooth in my VW Jetta and am unable to use the phone as a personal hotspot to connect my Ipad. I hope Apple sorts this ASAP!!

Dexter42 wrote:

William,

Most users don't care about prodigious technical virtue. They just want the silly thing to work. Seems simple enough, no ? And as far as it being a $500 device, check the secondary markets. Most don't value a used iPhone at $500.

Apple's fat product margins exist because its customers believe the products to be superior. This doesn't correlate directly with leading-edge technical standards (read the case studies). It's about the superior customer experience. If the experience is degraded in pursuit of technical excellence, you lose a piece of that perceived edge, and yield ground to the competition. Technical superiority is big with engineers, much less so with the average consumer.

Engineering for engineering's sake doesn't guarantee market share or profitability. Telling the customers (read: the people on this forum) that they're wrong and stupid will simply make the situation worse for you and Apple. Your sarcasm reinforces the perception - right or wrong - that Apple cares just that much less about the customers.

Were that really true, I might expect it, but customers also expect all the latest whizzy features to be supported on their new phone.

I never said anyone here was stupid, but note how all these issues are fixed by software updates by the head end manufacturers; that tells you where the problem really lies.

Personally I think it will be really interesting once Google adopts AVRCP 1.4/Bluetooth 4.0 and people start running into the same issues with their new Android devices (which some users are already.)

I've personally got zero stake in this game; feel free to purchase something else if you like, that's the way the free market works.

"customers also expect all the latest whizzy features to be supported on their new phone"

True, but this thread is about a previously working, preexisting, widely available feature . . . .

"note how all these issues are fixed by software updates by the head end manufacturers; that tells you where the problem really lies."

Maybe yes, maybe no . . .

The problem with my 4S bluetooth appeared when I updated to iOS6.0 and fully disappeared when I updated to iOS6.1.3. No firmware updates to either my 2012 Kenwood DNX9990HD nor to the MyLink (Panasonic OEM) in my 2013 Camaro. All the noise and finger pointing aside, Apple fixed this issue for me, so there must be some credence to my claims about customer experience. I'm not an engineer, and really don't care who created the problem. What matters to me is that it has been fixed by Apple.

"I've personally got zero stake in this game; feel free to purchase something else if you like, that's the way the free market works."

Absolutely (and I'm certain you'll do the same). But, if I buy another iPhone, it won't be because of your posts about superior technological standards and adherence to the purity thereof. It will be because Apple faithfully fixed my problem, and their newest product is more appealing than the alternatives.

Ever since I updated my iPhone 5 to 6.1.4, my mObridge unit will not stream via bluetooth through my 2008 Porsche Cayenne PCM. I can make calls, but music streaming is now broken. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Apple, fix it or I am getting a Windows8 phone. I bought a Windows8 touch-screen PC, and while I have historically been a Apple eco-system guy (3 iPads, 2 iPods, 2 iPhones), I am seriously considering dowloading all of my content and migrating it to SkyDrive.

I have exactly the same problem with my iPhone (both the 3gs and the new 5). Phone works, A2DP doesn't. Not acceptable. The mObridge guys told me to buy a Samsung phone as they have so many problems with the iPhone bluetooth stack being so far out of spec that they gave up on hacking in fixes for iPhones.

If Apple's Bluetooth stack was so out of spec, we'd see lots of tech blogs and such telling us exactly what Apple screwed up (any Bluetooth developer could post such details.)

We don't.

I'm not saying Apple's stack is perfect, just that it's not broken.

Wrong. Even Plantronics engineers are complaining.

Prove it.

Well William I would do, but you know I can't do that because this forum is so heavily censored.

Discussion of certain techniques of violating your license agreement are against the terms of use; discussion of Apple software bugs are not.

Thus if you have a link to a forum with Plantronics folks complaining of a bug in Apple's iOS 6 Bluetooth stack, I'd love to see it.

Really, there are standards involved here, so it would be trivial for a Bluetooth developer to state "Hey, when I issue this request, Apple's stack is supposed to do this but instead it does that."

Otherwise, this seems to apply:

Some car stereos require a firmware update for AVRCP 1.4 Bluetooth compatibility

Note that at the recent Google Developer's Conference, they just announced forthcoming Android support for AVRCP v1.3:

Android API version 18 (which will be landing in a few short months) will have developer APIs for Bluetooth Low Energy and AVRCP 1.3

As I've also mentioned before, AVRCP 1.5 was adopted July 24, 2012:

AVRCP 1.5

Meaning Apple's already one spec revision behind and Android is two.

(Oh, and yes, the specs are all supposed to be, barring bugs, backwards-compatible.)

Denial takes things to nowhere. There is no real help here just balming others.

Good bye topic!

You clearly have no idea of how Silicon Valley works. I heard this from a friend who works for Plantronics in a bar, not on a public forum. Apple should fix their software. Lots of people are complaining. As I said, the mObridge folks have simply given up and are recommending Samsung phones. This is not what I expect from Apple.

Dave

<Edited By Host>

Yes, you're clearly right, major bugs in Apple software unaddressed for over eight months would somehow generate exactly zero posts with technical details on developer forums, rumor sites or in tech blogs worldwide in an environment where Apple is everyone's favorite target.

How silly of me.

Same here--my iphone 5 was paired to my Jeep Wrangler and since upgrading to 6.1.4, the bluetooth hands free U-Connect doesn't work. At all. Doesn't recognize my Jeep anymore. Pain in the ***. It worked beautifully before. ***, Apple?

There's no question there's issues with iOS Bluetooth. I don't care what anyone says or how many updates to Bluetooth devices are done.

Right now I have 2 Bluetooth devices shown on my iPhone. An iPad and a headset, neither of which the 'forget this device' button is working for. I can try and try and reboot and try, maybe one in 50 times it will work. The headset will sometimes connect rarely does. It will work when I first pair it but I need to forget it before I can do that again. The headset works fine with non iPhone device. Other headsets do the same thing on my iPhone.

This was occurring in iOS 5 for me. I thought iOS 6 would fix it. It didn't.