The article doesn't even mention the words 'security' or 'privacy'. I don't know if security on WiFi is finally on par with wired connections. It might be; I certainly haven't researched it in the...
The article doesn't even mention the words 'security' or 'privacy'.
I don't know if security on WiFi is finally on par with wired connections. It might be; I certainly haven't researched it in the past 5-6 years, and I was never an expert. But I would be very surprised if it was.
Back when WiFi was the Cool New Tech, for many years, it suffered from crappy -- or, frankly, non-existent -- security. (Show of hands ... w/o looking it up, how many people remember wardriving with a Pringles can?)
At the simplest level, Wired Internet has two access points, the two ends of the wire, (yes, very clever people have worked on hacking data from the EM fields leaking out the sides of the wire, but basically, you get my point), while WiFi beams your data out to the entire world, and then depends on the quality of passwords, encryption, signal range, etc, to limit who can actually access the data.
That seems to me, an informed layperson, to be an eternal, unsolvable limitation, for anyone who actually cares about security and/or privacy (granted, an apparently extremely small percentage of the Internet community).
ETA: I just checked 'wardriving' in Wikipedia; apparently it's still a thing, more sophisticated of course. But I simply had to add/share this quote from the Wikipedia article. The opening sentence under "Legal and Ethical Considerations".
Some portray wardriving as a questionable practice (typically from its association with piggybacking), though, from a technical viewpoint, everything is working as designed
Ideally, the security capabilities of the network interface shouldn't matter. Every connection your computer makes to another should be done over an encrypted protocol (i.e. HTTPS). Most of the...
Ideally, the security capabilities of the network interface shouldn't matter. Every connection your computer makes to another should be done over an encrypted protocol (i.e. HTTPS). Most of the web is already there. The big holdout is DNS, which is still completely unencrypted by default for the vast majority of users, and the current slate of secure alternatives are a little controversial.
On unix: install unbound enable/start its service set nameserver to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/resolv.conf kill with fire systemd-resolvd or any other services that try to overwrite that file. (Maybe chmod...
On unix:
install unbound
enable/start its service
set nameserver to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/resolv.conf
kill with fire systemd-resolvd or any other services that try to overwrite that file. (Maybe chmod 444 & chattr +i if it's uncooperative)
to make sure it's working, run dig google.com. It will output a bunch of junk, one of the last lines of which should be ‘SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)’
On windows I have no idea.
EDIT: also make sure your browser is using the recursive resolver. For firefox, about:preference → general → network settings. Make sure that ‘enable DNS over HTTPS’ is unchecked. For chrome I'm not sure; web search indicates that visiting chrome://flags/#dns-over-https and turning that setting off will do the trick, but that setting seems to be missing from my copy of chrome.
This is an interesting article that remarks some of the problem about wireless technology, but I believe that this problems are not cause by the technology itself but by the poor implementation of...
This is an interesting article that remarks some of the problem about wireless technology, but I believe that this problems are not cause by the technology itself but by the poor implementation of it.
I'm writing this using a wireless keyboard that uses Lightspeed, a proprietary tech by Logitech that makes the connection literally imperceptible fast. I play high speed input games like Doom Eternal on this and I never ever had any problems regarding latency. I even was impress that this works even during the boot stage of the PC (I can go into recovery or the mobo feats, or control GRUB), meaning between the dongle and the keyboard itself they do literally all the work and from the PC perspective it's just another keyboard connected via usb.
And this is also hinted on the article, when they talk about how wireless audio has a latency problem but then mention AptX as a coded that tries to solve this problem, but both sides have to implemented.
Are Lightspeed keyboard connections encrypted? I feel like Logitech would advertise it on the product page if it was. Without encryption it's just a vector for keylogging/MITM attacks and a...
Are Lightspeed keyboard connections encrypted? I feel like Logitech would advertise it on the product page if it was. Without encryption it's just a vector for keylogging/MITM attacks and a massive oversight on Logitech's part.
There are reported CVEs for the tech out there already. But apparently only one can be performed remotely (I don't want to go into security for physical access in this thread about wireless...
There are reported CVEs for the tech out there already. But apparently only one can be performed remotely (I don't want to go into security for physical access in this thread about wireless stuff).
And I think this is the mayor flaws of the original article, they don't even mention the potential security problems that come with the wireless territory in comparison with keeping stuff wired.
AFAIK they are encrypted. I know because there was an exploit that allowed attacks to decrypt lightspeed connections (and inject arbitrary code into host machines) which has since been fixed. But...
AFAIK they are encrypted. I know because there was an exploit that allowed attacks to decrypt lightspeed connections (and inject arbitrary code into host machines) which has since been fixed. But given that decrypting was part of the exploit, that presumably implies that the transmission is encrypted.
The headline is simplistic, but it seems like a good warning about preferring wireless to wired technologies because it’s newer, particularly if you don’t take time to check out its performance....
The headline is simplistic, but it seems like a good warning about preferring wireless to wired technologies because it’s newer, particularly if you don’t take time to check out its performance.
I’m using a wired mouse and keyboard with my Mac mostly because I got tired of recharging things, but I’m also thinking about running Ethernet due to some weird bug where it doesn’t reconnect when waking from sleep. Maybe it will improve performance too?
I'm surprised to hear that! I used a wireless Logitech mouse for several months a few years ago, and it was horrible. I had to get a different mouse because I couldn't work with it. It would put...
I'm writing this using a wireless keyboard that uses Lightspeed, a proprietary tech by Logitech that makes the connection literally imperceptible fast.
I'm surprised to hear that! I used a wireless Logitech mouse for several months a few years ago, and it was horrible. I had to get a different mouse because I couldn't work with it. It would put itself to sleep after something short like a minute to save on battery, and every time I grabbed it after typing, there was a very irritating delay before the cursor would respond as the mouse woke up and reconnected. I'm glad they've finally fix that!
When I bought it I though it would be like you described, I was expecting some delay specially when starting, connecting or waking up from sleep, so that's the part that surprised me the most... I...
When I bought it I though it would be like you described, I was expecting some delay specially when starting, connecting or waking up from sleep, so that's the part that surprised me the most... I made an experiment pairing the keyboard via lightspeed to a PC and via bluetooth to a notebook (because it has both connections) and when switching between both (using the dedicated buttons) was literally instantaneous.
I played with it a lot because I couldn't believe it. You can perceive a little delay when connected via bluetooth, it's consistent and really minimal so it's not a bother (I don't want to throw numbers because I didn't measure it but let's say it's about 25ms tops). But when used with the lightspeed connection the delay difference between a this and a wired keyboard is literally imperceptible.
And also that's why I mentioned about this working during boot time.
BTW, this doesn't use the Unified Receiver so you can't use the same dongle for multiple products, it needs it's own so maybe that's the difference with yours. If your mouse can use the Unified Receiver then that's another tech.
The battery life in my case last between 10 and 15 days, and because I'm kinda lazy I just leave it connected for one day and that's more than enough to fully recharge it, but I believe it only needs 6 to 8 hs or so.
As a layman, my problem with wireless is that it requires knowledge and effort to work optimally. On the other hand, a 5 dollar ethernet cable glued with tape to the wall solved my problem in less...
As a layman, my problem with wireless is that it requires knowledge and effort to work optimally. On the other hand, a 5 dollar ethernet cable glued with tape to the wall solved my problem in less than 30 minutes while I remained largely ignorant.
As someone who considers themselves fairly knowledgeable my problem with wireless is that in order to make it work optimally it is simply a lot more expensive than the wired variants. The way our...
As someone who considers themselves fairly knowledgeable my problem with wireless is that in order to make it work optimally it is simply a lot more expensive than the wired variants. The way our house is setup we simply can't get the wifi coverage we want with a single router simply due to a poorly placed bathroom playing the part of signal blocking cube in the middle of our apartment.
So I was presented with the choice of investing a bunch extra in a second access point or some fancy mesh networking solutions or deciding what part of the apartment we wanted good wifi in and using ethernet for devices elsewhere. Obviously I went for the latter as it was cheaper in both time and money.
The same is actually true for bluetooth headsets as well when it comes down to it, you pay a lot more in order to approach the same quality when using cheaper wired solutions. There are of courses some caveats there, but generally speaking I am willing to claim this to be the truth.
I agree that wired is great for a lot of situations, but at the end of the day, I don't want to have wires exposed everywhere. The problem is that the ISPs are notorious for lying to you and...
I agree that wired is great for a lot of situations, but at the end of the day, I don't want to have wires exposed everywhere. The problem is that the ISPs are notorious for lying to you and saying, "Oh yeah, we can totally get in your walls to string the cable through to whatever room you want to put it in," on the phone, only to have the actual technician say, "Oh we don't do that. I really wish they'd stop telling people we can. Bye!" And people don't want to pay yet another person to come out and do it, and doing it yourself is a pain.
I was fortunate enough that the cable company was able to run a single wire from the attic down the corner of the room where it's barely visible. And it's mostly behind a door. But that was just pure luck.
Wireless is a trap, it allows you to be open to more avenues of tracking. On Android, Google advertises location services and ways for higher location accuracy by allowing background Wi-Fi and...
Wireless is a trap, it allows you to be open to more avenues of tracking.
On Android, Google advertises location services and ways for higher location accuracy by allowing background Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning, even when these sensors are toggled off by the user. These sensors, being your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter, will poll and broadcast - commonly known as active scanning. This is particularly open to malicious use when your Wi-Fi on a mobile device is toggled on. If your device is set to auto-reconnect, especially for a hidden network, it MUST broadcast your Wireless Access Point name (SSID) to all Wireless Access Point beacons nearby to see if it is within range. You should never use a hidden network if you're aiming for security by obscurity, it's easily searchable in seconds.
If your MAC address on your device has been identified elsewhere, it can be quite easy to compare it to other systems/applications as it is considered globally unique. There's actually global maps for this publicly available online, and the term for this is called wardriving. Google has been found to use this to their advertising advantage, given their streetview cars are equipped with devices to capture this data for similar mapping purposes.
There's growing use of advertising using these beacons in stores, malls, buildings, and offices. Stores can use them to accurately measure within centimeters (especially with Bluetooth Low Energy) where a customer might pause due to marketing, or where certain locations in a store contains more traffic.
Starting with Android 10 and iOS 14, these operating systems offer randomized MAC addresses, but they are not generated randomly at an interval where it is most helpful (e.g. daily).
If you're referring to: Advertises is the wrong choice of word there. More so, Google informs users in the device settings under Location....
If you're referring to:
Google advertises location services and ways for higher location accuracy by allowing background Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning, even when these sensors are toggled off by the user.
Advertises is the wrong choice of word there. More so, Google informs users in the device settings under Location.
Streetview apparently used to record the locations of WiFi routers and they use that to implement location services. Nowadays they apparently don't need to do this because mobile phones do a...
Streetview apparently used to record the locations of WiFi routers and they use that to implement location services. Nowadays they apparently don't need to do this because mobile phones do a better job. There are other companies recording router locations as well, for similar purposes.
Also, a decade ago, someone at Google decided to have StreetView cars log all WiFi traffic, not realizing the implications, and this included a lot of unencrypted data, including people's passwords and stuff. After it became public, as part of settling the lawsuit, they agreed to put in place the internal privacy reviews that all Google products have to go through since then. (Also, I don't think a similar thing could be done today because everyone uses encrypted WiFi these days?)
But I meant "Google has been found to use this to their advertising advantage." I guess that would happen indirectly?
The little blurb in my Android settings says it's randomized upon connecting to a network, which seems about as helpful as you can get.
Starting with Android 10 and iOS 14, these operating systems offer randomized MAC addresses, but they are not generated randomly at an interval where it is most helpful (e.g. daily).
The little blurb in my Android settings says it's randomized upon connecting to a network, which seems about as helpful as you can get.
To illustrate the degree of agony I’m talking about, below I’ll cover some of the subtle, hard-to-notice but severe problems I’ve run into with wireless protocols. If you’re convinced, try out some wires—you, too, can figure out whether you’ve been a victim of the wireless trap
[...]
Qt included a component which would poll for networks every 30 seconds whenever a “network access manager” was instantiated, causing pretty much any Qt app using the network to degrade your wifi for ~5 out of every 30 seconds.
[...]
(Fortunately, it does look like in 2017—three years after the original bug report—they finally realized they should just stop polling and fixed the bug the right way.)
Qt was the worst offender, but it’s far from the only one. Even macOS had a bug for a while where the same thing would happen when you opened Spotlight (which I do frequently during video calls, if someone asked me to look at a particular file, or if I want to zone out and read the internet multitask). I had to fix it by disabling individual Spotlight result types until I found out which one was causing the problem. So it seems even Apple’s own developers don’t realize that wifi polling is a hazard.
[...]
Most Bluetooth headsets introduce around 150-300ms of latency (the time between my computer receiving the audio from the Internet, and the sound coming out of the headphones). That means that if I’m chatting with a friend in New York, the audio data will take about 50ms to get from them to my computer, and, say, 200ms—4x as long—to get from my computer to my ears.
[...]
Related to the codec issue, many bluetooth devices will play high-quality audio when the microphone is turned off, but degrade to much lower-quality audio when it’s turned on.
This is every bluetooth device -- it is built into the standard. Bluetooth supports a variety of profiles which can utilize the bluetooth standard piecemeal to support a use case. The A2DP profile...
many bluetooth devices will play high-quality audio when the microphone is turned off, but degrade to much lower-quality audio when it’s turned on.
This is every bluetooth device -- it is built into the standard. Bluetooth supports a variety of profiles which can utilize the bluetooth standard piecemeal to support a use case. The A2DP profile provides a high-quality, unidirectional, audio stream while the HFP and HSP profiles provide bidirectional audio streams that have much lower bitrates. When you want a bidirectional audio stream the device must switch to one of these profiles hence the noticeable drop in audio quality.
As usual, Apple wasn't happy with the user experience possible with the capabilities of the existing standard and decided to extend it with their own proprietary bits. And, as usual, the rest of...
As usual, Apple wasn't happy with the user experience possible with the capabilities of the existing standard and decided to extend it with their own proprietary bits.
And, as usual, the rest of the industry doesn't seem to understand why Apple/users want these extra features to begin with and continue plugging along without them. At least this time Apple decided to maintain full interoperability with the existing standard in addition to their proprietary superset, instead of creating an annoyingly fractured ecosystem.
We spent a bit of time running Ethernet to my desktop computer (an older iMac). The difference in ping time is barely measurable and in ordinary use it's unnoticeable. Maybe it's because the...
We spent a bit of time running Ethernet to my desktop computer (an older iMac). The difference in ping time is barely measurable and in ordinary use it's unnoticeable. Maybe it's because the router is pretty close by anyway?
But I used to have a problem with WiFi being slow to connect, or not connecting at all, when the machine wakes up from sleep. That seems to be fixed, so it was (barely) worth it.
The article doesn't even mention the words 'security' or 'privacy'.
I don't know if security on WiFi is finally on par with wired connections. It might be; I certainly haven't researched it in the past 5-6 years, and I was never an expert. But I would be very surprised if it was.
Back when WiFi was the Cool New Tech, for many years, it suffered from crappy -- or, frankly, non-existent -- security. (Show of hands ... w/o looking it up, how many people remember wardriving with a Pringles can?)
At the simplest level, Wired Internet has two access points, the two ends of the wire, (yes, very clever people have worked on hacking data from the EM fields leaking out the sides of the wire, but basically, you get my point), while WiFi beams your data out to the entire world, and then depends on the quality of passwords, encryption, signal range, etc, to limit who can actually access the data.
That seems to me, an informed layperson, to be an eternal, unsolvable limitation, for anyone who actually cares about security and/or privacy (granted, an apparently extremely small percentage of the Internet community).
ETA: I just checked 'wardriving' in Wikipedia; apparently it's still a thing, more sophisticated of course. But I simply had to add/share this quote from the Wikipedia article. The opening sentence under "Legal and Ethical Considerations".
Ideally, the security capabilities of the network interface shouldn't matter. Every connection your computer makes to another should be done over an encrypted protocol (i.e. HTTPS). Most of the web is already there. The big holdout is DNS, which is still completely unencrypted by default for the vast majority of users, and the current slate of secure alternatives are a little controversial.
This is a concern even on a trusted network, as cache poisoning is a very real problem. The proper solution is to run your own recursive dns resolver.
Are there any guides you recommend for the "knows enough about networking to be dangerous" crowd?
On unix:
install unbound
enable/start its service
set nameserver to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/resolv.conf
to make sure it's working, run
dig google.com. It will output a bunch of junk, one of the last lines of which should be ‘SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)’On windows I have no idea.
EDIT: also make sure your browser is using the recursive resolver. For firefox, about:preference → general → network settings. Make sure that ‘enable DNS over HTTPS’ is unchecked. For chrome I'm not sure; web search indicates that visiting chrome://flags/#dns-over-https and turning that setting off will do the trick, but that setting seems to be missing from my copy of chrome.
This is an interesting article that remarks some of the problem about wireless technology, but I believe that this problems are not cause by the technology itself but by the poor implementation of it.
I'm writing this using a wireless keyboard that uses Lightspeed, a proprietary tech by Logitech that makes the connection literally imperceptible fast. I play high speed input games like Doom Eternal on this and I never ever had any problems regarding latency. I even was impress that this works even during the boot stage of the PC (I can go into recovery or the mobo feats, or control GRUB), meaning between the dongle and the keyboard itself they do literally all the work and from the PC perspective it's just another keyboard connected via usb.
And this is also hinted on the article, when they talk about how wireless audio has a latency problem but then mention AptX as a coded that tries to solve this problem, but both sides have to implemented.
There's also a lot of people reporting that wireless game controllers are even faster than wired ones (even with the same controller).
And as another comment here already said, security concerns are not even mentioned, which are IMO the real problem at this point.
So to me is not that the "wireless is a trap" but that poor implementation of tech has it's consequences, as always.
Are Lightspeed keyboard connections encrypted? I feel like Logitech would advertise it on the product page if it was. Without encryption it's just a vector for keylogging/MITM attacks and a massive oversight on Logitech's part.
There are reported CVEs for the tech out there already. But apparently only one can be performed remotely (I don't want to go into security for physical access in this thread about wireless stuff).
And I think this is the mayor flaws of the original article, they don't even mention the potential security problems that come with the wireless territory in comparison with keeping stuff wired.
AFAIK they are encrypted. I know because there was an exploit that allowed attacks to decrypt lightspeed connections (and inject arbitrary code into host machines) which has since been fixed. But given that decrypting was part of the exploit, that presumably implies that the transmission is encrypted.
The headline is simplistic, but it seems like a good warning about preferring wireless to wired technologies because it’s newer, particularly if you don’t take time to check out its performance.
I’m using a wired mouse and keyboard with my Mac mostly because I got tired of recharging things, but I’m also thinking about running Ethernet due to some weird bug where it doesn’t reconnect when waking from sleep. Maybe it will improve performance too?
I'm surprised to hear that! I used a wireless Logitech mouse for several months a few years ago, and it was horrible. I had to get a different mouse because I couldn't work with it. It would put itself to sleep after something short like a minute to save on battery, and every time I grabbed it after typing, there was a very irritating delay before the cursor would respond as the mouse woke up and reconnected. I'm glad they've finally fix that!
When I bought it I though it would be like you described, I was expecting some delay specially when starting, connecting or waking up from sleep, so that's the part that surprised me the most... I made an experiment pairing the keyboard via lightspeed to a PC and via bluetooth to a notebook (because it has both connections) and when switching between both (using the dedicated buttons) was literally instantaneous.
I played with it a lot because I couldn't believe it. You can perceive a little delay when connected via bluetooth, it's consistent and really minimal so it's not a bother (I don't want to throw numbers because I didn't measure it but let's say it's about 25ms tops). But when used with the lightspeed connection the delay difference between a this and a wired keyboard is literally imperceptible.
And also that's why I mentioned about this working during boot time.
BTW, this doesn't use the Unified Receiver so you can't use the same dongle for multiple products, it needs it's own so maybe that's the difference with yours. If your mouse can use the Unified Receiver then that's another tech.
The battery life in my case last between 10 and 15 days, and because I'm kinda lazy I just leave it connected for one day and that's more than enough to fully recharge it, but I believe it only needs 6 to 8 hs or so.
As a layman, my problem with wireless is that it requires knowledge and effort to work optimally. On the other hand, a 5 dollar ethernet cable glued with tape to the wall solved my problem in less than 30 minutes while I remained largely ignorant.
As someone who considers themselves fairly knowledgeable my problem with wireless is that in order to make it work optimally it is simply a lot more expensive than the wired variants. The way our house is setup we simply can't get the wifi coverage we want with a single router simply due to a poorly placed bathroom playing the part of signal blocking cube in the middle of our apartment.
So I was presented with the choice of investing a bunch extra in a second access point or some fancy mesh networking solutions or deciding what part of the apartment we wanted good wifi in and using ethernet for devices elsewhere. Obviously I went for the latter as it was cheaper in both time and money.
The same is actually true for bluetooth headsets as well when it comes down to it, you pay a lot more in order to approach the same quality when using cheaper wired solutions. There are of courses some caveats there, but generally speaking I am willing to claim this to be the truth.
I agree that wired is great for a lot of situations, but at the end of the day, I don't want to have wires exposed everywhere. The problem is that the ISPs are notorious for lying to you and saying, "Oh yeah, we can totally get in your walls to string the cable through to whatever room you want to put it in," on the phone, only to have the actual technician say, "Oh we don't do that. I really wish they'd stop telling people we can. Bye!" And people don't want to pay yet another person to come out and do it, and doing it yourself is a pain.
I was fortunate enough that the cable company was able to run a single wire from the attic down the corner of the room where it's barely visible. And it's mostly behind a door. But that was just pure luck.
Wireless is a trap, it allows you to be open to more avenues of tracking.
On Android, Google advertises location services and ways for higher location accuracy by allowing background Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning, even when these sensors are toggled off by the user. These sensors, being your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter, will poll and broadcast - commonly known as active scanning. This is particularly open to malicious use when your Wi-Fi on a mobile device is toggled on. If your device is set to auto-reconnect, especially for a hidden network, it MUST broadcast your Wireless Access Point name (SSID) to all Wireless Access Point beacons nearby to see if it is within range. You should never use a hidden network if you're aiming for security by obscurity, it's easily searchable in seconds.
If your MAC address on your device has been identified elsewhere, it can be quite easy to compare it to other systems/applications as it is considered globally unique. There's actually global maps for this publicly available online, and the term for this is called wardriving. Google has been found to use this to their advertising advantage, given their streetview cars are equipped with devices to capture this data for similar mapping purposes.
There's growing use of advertising using these beacons in stores, malls, buildings, and offices. Stores can use them to accurately measure within centimeters (especially with Bluetooth Low Energy) where a customer might pause due to marketing, or where certain locations in a store contains more traffic.
Starting with Android 10 and iOS 14, these operating systems offer randomized MAC addresses, but they are not generated randomly at an interval where it is most helpful (e.g. daily).
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with respect to Google advertising. Care to share a link?
If you're referring to:
Advertises is the wrong choice of word there. More so, Google informs users in the device settings under Location.
https://www.howtogeek.com/211186/how-to-disable-google-location-wi-fi-scanning-on-android/
Streetview apparently used to record the locations of WiFi routers and they use that to implement location services. Nowadays they apparently don't need to do this because mobile phones do a better job. There are other companies recording router locations as well, for similar purposes.
Also, a decade ago, someone at Google decided to have StreetView cars log all WiFi traffic, not realizing the implications, and this included a lot of unencrypted data, including people's passwords and stuff. After it became public, as part of settling the lawsuit, they agreed to put in place the internal privacy reviews that all Google products have to go through since then. (Also, I don't think a similar thing could be done today because everyone uses encrypted WiFi these days?)
But I meant "Google has been found to use this to their advertising advantage." I guess that would happen indirectly?
The little blurb in my Android settings says it's randomized upon connecting to a network, which seems about as helpful as you can get.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
This is every bluetooth device -- it is built into the standard. Bluetooth supports a variety of profiles which can utilize the bluetooth standard piecemeal to support a use case. The A2DP profile provides a high-quality, unidirectional, audio stream while the HFP and HSP profiles provide bidirectional audio streams that have much lower bitrates. When you want a bidirectional audio stream the device must switch to one of these profiles hence the noticeable drop in audio quality.
Aren’t airpods Bluetooth? They seem to have high quality audio in both directions.
As usual, Apple wasn't happy with the user experience possible with the capabilities of the existing standard and decided to extend it with their own proprietary bits.
And, as usual, the rest of the industry doesn't seem to understand why Apple/users want these extra features to begin with and continue plugging along without them. At least this time Apple decided to maintain full interoperability with the existing standard in addition to their proprietary superset, instead of creating an annoyingly fractured ecosystem.
They have Bluetooth and also an additional proprietary wireless chip in them. They call it the H1 and they claim it offers lower latency.
We spent a bit of time running Ethernet to my desktop computer (an older iMac). The difference in ping time is barely measurable and in ordinary use it's unnoticeable. Maybe it's because the router is pretty close by anyway?
But I used to have a problem with WiFi being slow to connect, or not connecting at all, when the machine wakes up from sleep. That seems to be fixed, so it was (barely) worth it.