What happened? Well, our first regret was assuming that our factory at that time — a factory that made lots of Bluetooth speakers — could easily design the electronics for us, saving us lots of time and money. That went pretty well at first. But they, in turn, outsourced the Bluetooth software and chipset to another company in another country.
As a result, the Stereo Dock would crash often — rapidly adjusting the volume would do it. The Bluetooth pairing/unpairing experience was rough. And when we played music, it just didn’t sound very good. The back-and-forth between three companies trying to fix bugs became a huge challenge. And worst of all: the cost of the Stereo Dock kept getting higher and higher.
I'm kind of surprised that it's apparently so hard to write the code for a simple speaker. But also I'm not entirely surprised. Bluetooth, I've heard, is a massive tangle of somewhat unrelated...
I'm kind of surprised that it's apparently so hard to write the code for a simple speaker. But also I'm not entirely surprised. Bluetooth, I've heard, is a massive tangle of somewhat unrelated standards that have a bunch of weird hoops to go through. You've got to pay for licenses for multiple audio codecs. The chips probably have hardware decoders that will make it really energy efficient, but using those probably needs use of some binary blobs and/or spaghetti code to deal with to use them properly.
I've heard the same from a friend of mine who works in the industry. I've also just had a quick look and to my surprise the standard seems to be rather openly available here. There are a lot of...
Bluetooth, I've heard, is a massive tangle of somewhat unrelated standards that have a bunch of weird hoops to go through.
I've heard the same from a friend of mine who works in the industry. I've also just had a quick look and to my surprise the standard seems to be rather openly available here. There are a lot of individual specifications, all with their own use case and not necessarily individually required.
Honestly, just looking through the list, it seems to be a minor miracle that unrelated BT devices work together at all
I've never looked deeply into the specs, but it's unsurprising considering how flaky and inconsistent BT products tend to be. I'm honestly surprised a new standard to supersede it hasn't arrived...
I've never looked deeply into the specs, but it's unsurprising considering how flaky and inconsistent BT products tend to be. I'm honestly surprised a new standard to supersede it hasn't arrived yet. In contrast, both USB and WiFi continue to evolve but it feels like BT is just as janky as it's ever been. (A totally anecdotal, vibes-based assessment... I don't keep abreast of this space and could be completely wrong...)
This is unfortunate, but props to them for not releasing a sub-par product. With the goodwill generated by how good the play date is, they could easily burn that and sell a ton of cheap Bluetooth...
This is unfortunate, but props to them for not releasing a sub-par product. With the goodwill generated by how good the play date is, they could easily burn that and sell a ton of cheap Bluetooth speakers for a lot of money. But a quality product should come first. More companies should learn from Panic.
Most consumers want cheap and are willing to sacrifice quality. They'd rather have the money to buy 10 cheap things that are all pretty crappy but are "good enough" than 1 or 2 really high quality...
Most consumers want cheap and are willing to sacrifice quality. They'd rather have the money to buy 10 cheap things that are all pretty crappy but are "good enough" than 1 or 2 really high quality things that do a great job.
We're lucky there are companies like Panic that still want to make quality products for the small subset of consumers who want (and can afford) high-quality things.
That doesn't surprise me at all. For a while I poked around at the community firmware for the PineBuds Pro, which I believe was similarly acquired from either the manufacturer or someone they...
...only to be greeted with some gnarly code (think #IFDEFs for every Bluetooth speaker ever made) and an obscure toolchain.
That doesn't surprise me at all. For a while I poked around at the community firmware for the PineBuds Pro, which I believe was similarly acquired from either the manufacturer or someone they outsourced the software development to, thinking I might fiddle with some of the ANC stuff or try to implement LDAC support, but at the time the source code was straight nightmare fuel. Doing a code search for IFDEF returns almost 900 results.
The problems of outsourcing:
I'm kind of surprised that it's apparently so hard to write the code for a simple speaker. But also I'm not entirely surprised. Bluetooth, I've heard, is a massive tangle of somewhat unrelated standards that have a bunch of weird hoops to go through. You've got to pay for licenses for multiple audio codecs. The chips probably have hardware decoders that will make it really energy efficient, but using those probably needs use of some binary blobs and/or spaghetti code to deal with to use them properly.
I've heard the same from a friend of mine who works in the industry. I've also just had a quick look and to my surprise the standard seems to be rather openly available here. There are a lot of individual specifications, all with their own use case and not necessarily individually required.
Honestly, just looking through the list, it seems to be a minor miracle that unrelated BT devices work together at all
I've never looked deeply into the specs, but it's unsurprising considering how flaky and inconsistent BT products tend to be. I'm honestly surprised a new standard to supersede it hasn't arrived yet. In contrast, both USB and WiFi continue to evolve but it feels like BT is just as janky as it's ever been. (A totally anecdotal, vibes-based assessment... I don't keep abreast of this space and could be completely wrong...)
This is unfortunate, but props to them for not releasing a sub-par product. With the goodwill generated by how good the play date is, they could easily burn that and sell a ton of cheap Bluetooth speakers for a lot of money. But a quality product should come first. More companies should learn from Panic.
Most consumers want cheap and are willing to sacrifice quality. They'd rather have the money to buy 10 cheap things that are all pretty crappy but are "good enough" than 1 or 2 really high quality things that do a great job.
We're lucky there are companies like Panic that still want to make quality products for the small subset of consumers who want (and can afford) high-quality things.
That doesn't surprise me at all. For a while I poked around at the community firmware for the PineBuds Pro, which I believe was similarly acquired from either the manufacturer or someone they outsourced the software development to, thinking I might fiddle with some of the ANC stuff or try to implement LDAC support, but at the time the source code was straight nightmare fuel. Doing a code search for
IFDEFreturns almost 900 results.