Apple artificially restricting handoff features?

N

Nonchalance

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 28, 2010
Messages
110
It seems that Bluetooth 4.0 LE is the requirement for for Handoff and Instant Hotspot, upon upgrading to the Oct 16 official release, I got this on my 2011 Macbook Air:

OHh3KVP.png


And this is the official list from Apple.com

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What is going on? Instant Hotspot was even working on the Yosemite GMs that I've installed. Now it suddenly stops working with a software update? This is absurd.
 
You can get it working, but it's not reliable. It will sometimes disconnect without any notification and you just won't know it's not connected until you look at the phone and realize your call didn't show up on the Mac. In its current state, it's not tough to see why Apple doesn't officially support it on 2011 systems, though it does "work." Instant Hotspot seems to function perfectly fine though, not sure why they rolled it back other than wanting to package Instant Hotspot and Handoff together on all platforms that support them.

Here's how to turn it on for 2011 Airs and Minis:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=20015070&postcount=609
 
Pretty impressed by the workaround haha, that's quite a process.

Why isn't it supported when both 2011 and 2012 have the exact same BT chip? Broadcom BCM20702 Single-Chip Bluetooth 4.0 Processor with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support is present in both. There doesn't seem to be a hardware reason for this, just the company pushing people to upgrade.
 
Did you expect anything less from Apple?? Remember Siri? Panoramas? Airplay? Camera filters? Airdrop?
 
ND40oz said:
Don't forget wifi calling on the iPhone 5c but not on the iPhone 5.
Click to expand...

Oh yes... how could one forget such things?? :p

P.S. Maybe it was because the plastic body handles wifi calling better than the metal-clad iPhone 5. The 5s obviously uses different metal and therefore works without issue!! :D
 
You just have to accept how Apple's business model is. They make money off hardware and that has not been any secret for a very long time.

Apple just wants your money, and if you can accept that then I think you end up with a very nice user experience. But if the money thing is a major enough point to you (which it will be for most people) then it's going to affect your experience negatively. I got burned a couple times by Apple (G4 Mac Mini for one) and I left for a while, but I realized there was just a high operating cost for the experience.

Ask most Apple users if they have ever bought a piece of Apple software outside of OSX upgrades and they will probably say no. Ask them if they can even name more then 2 programs Apple sells and most would have a hard time.

They provide a very nearly complete operating system (both OSX and iOS) and yet there is little to no software cost for all that. The answer is high markup on the hardware. From top to bottom, all Apple customers contribute to the financing of the company.

To be honest I kind of like that they are so upfront with how they want my money. Buy this expensive thing and your in the club. Its simple enough. I don't have to worry about things going on in the background.

When I think of how egotistical Jobs was, I imagine that he would get pissed at the idea of other people trying to take advantage of his customers because they were his to take advantage of. He's probably all like "Screw you, you wanna spy on people, go get your people then". Probably why he hated Flash so much.
 
i dislike the way they keep on doing this, but if I hate apple, I`d have to hate almost every other tech giant which makes hardware or software etc.

This is the model that they have made to exist basically. If they didn`t why would anyone want another new device or future innovation??? I could sit on my existing devices till they stopped working basically.

For example Tesla had initally gone against the grain, promising frequent OTA updates on their vehicle, however they eventually got the message that if you want to exist as a company then you need to innovate Ala autopilot. hardware requiring autopilot is different (i wanted to address this) however were talking a car in relation to a phone.
 
What's with all the people in here claiming the feature was withheld for purposes of forced obsolescence? I already posted the method for getting it working on 2011 Airs/Minis and if you try it out for yourself, you'll see that it's flaky and unreliable. Apple withholding a feature that does not work properly for some reason is not forced obsolescence. If you have it working perfectly somehow, post the fix!
 
CEpeep said:
What's with all the people in here claiming the feature was withheld for purposes of forced obsolescence? I already posted the method for getting it working on 2011 Airs/Minis and if you try it out for yourself, you'll see that it's flaky and unreliable. Apple withholding a feature that does not work properly for some reason is not forced obsolescence. If you have it working perfectly somehow, post the fix!
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it work properly with an official 1st party kext? I didn't really expect a random workaround found by on Macrumors to work that well. And it's just especially damning for me when one of the features had been working perfectly on the DP and GM builds.

I guess my bigger question is why it is not supported? As far as I know, 2011 and 2012 have the exact same wifi and BT chips, Broadcom BCM4322 and BCM20702.

I'm genuinely curious, as someone with deep interests in the hardware and software that I use (like most [H] members).

westrock2000 said:
You just have to accept how Apple's business model is. They make money off hardware and that has not been any secret for a very long time.

Apple just wants your money, and if you can accept that then I think you end up with a very nice user experience. But if the money thing is a major enough point to you (which it will be for most people) then it's going to affect your experience negatively. I got burned a couple times by Apple (G4 Mac Mini for one) and I left for a while, but I realized there was just a high operating cost for the experience.

Ask most Apple users if they have ever bought a piece of Apple software outside of OSX upgrades and they will probably say no. Ask them if they can even name more then 2 programs Apple sells and most would have a hard time.

They provide a very nearly complete operating system (both OSX and iOS) and yet there is little to no software cost for all that. The answer is high markup on the hardware. From top to bottom, all Apple customers contribute to the financing of the company.

To be honest I kind of like that they are so upfront with how they want my money. Buy this expensive thing and your in the club. Its simple enough. I don't have to worry about things going on in the background.

When I think of how egotistical Jobs was, I imagine that he would get pissed at the idea of other people trying to take advantage of his customers because they were his to take advantage of. He's probably all like "Screw you, you wanna spy on people, go get your people then". Probably why he hated Flash so much.
Click to expand...

This really hits the point, there are definite trade-offs with choosing the Apple way.
 
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Nonchalance said:
Wouldn't it work properly with an official 1st party kext? I didn't really expect a random workaround found by on Macrumors to work that well. And it's just especially damning for me when one of the features had been working perfectly on the DP and GM builds.
Click to expand...

The workaround is just adding the Bluetooth device in the 2011 Air and Mini to the list of Handoff-enabled devices. That's it. It's not a "random workaround" and it invokes the Handoff features in the same way as Apple does on the devices they support it on. The fact that it does not work reliably is not a symptom of the process used to enable it. It just doesn't work great on the 2011 Air. If you want to use it anyway, you have what you need to turn it on and should be able to understand after using it for a bit why Apple wasn't confident enough in it to officially offer support.
 
CEpeep said:
What's with all the people in here claiming the feature was withheld for purposes of forced obsolescence?
Click to expand...

There are a couple of trolls here. Just ignore 'em.

We'll find out tomorrow exactly which devices support Handoff and which don't. iOS 8.1 will be the final link in the chain.
 
In the case of the iPhone 5 not supporting WiFi calling, it is kind of a joke. It seemed to work fine in the beta from what I read and was removed without any reasons in the final version.
 
If this follows the same trend, it would be pretty terrible. Will try to activate it with the tweak for now.
 
CEpeep said:
If you have a Mac with the right hardware that doesn't officially support the feature, you can now use a handy tool to activate it:
https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/

This basically automates the method mentioned earlier, but it backs everything up and wraps all the logic in a nice, easy-to-use package.
Click to expand...

So basically MORE proof that Apple could have had this working right out of the box.
 
You're trying awfully hard to get people to care. When do you expect to achieve at least some measure of success?
 
wonderfield said:
You're trying awfully hard to get people to care. When do you expect to achieve at least some measure of success?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not... why should anyone expect a company to treat them fairly instead of trying to ream them every time a new product is released?? Shame on me....
 
wonderfield said:
You're trying awfully hard to get people to care. When do you expect to achieve at least some measure of success?
Click to expand...

I see haters post from left to right and top to bottom, it's annoying, but they just won't stop because.... You know....

:rolleyes:
 
So I can't get this to work on my late 2013 rMBP and iPhone 6. The text message forwarding works, but none of the handoff features.
 
shansoft said:
You need to turn on bluetooth, it works for me.
Click to expand...

I know that I need to have Bluetooth on, how else would it work? I've tried everything. I can airdrop shit, just not handoff. So Bluetooth works, just not handoff. I've checked every option, made sure it's the same wifi and whatnot. It just doesn't work for me. Looks like a couple of other people are having the same issue based on Google results.
 
xIronCrossx said:
I know that I need to have Bluetooth on, how else would it work? I've tried everything. I can airdrop shit, just not handoff. So Bluetooth works, just not handoff. I've checked every option, made sure it's the same wifi and whatnot. It just doesn't work for me. Looks like a couple of other people are having the same issue based on Google results.
Click to expand...
I've tried to test it and even gave up my iPad's jailbreak to see what it was all about. I'm not sure I even know how to use it, to be honest. But I also haven't downloaded the retail release of Yosemite and done a fresh install so I'm not sure if that would present an issue. I'm going to do all this later today (Friday).

edit: now I remember the problem I was having...when I try to pair my iPad to my macbook via bluetooth there are two (greyed out) macbook entries in my bluetooth settings. I can't delete them
I'm currently trying to follow the advice from fdelillo here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6537319?start=15&tstart=0 although I've used it before when I first had the problem. It didn't work for me, although others said it worked for them, so that's when I concluded I would worry less about it until I had a fresh (and non-beta) install of Yosemite.
 
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xIronCrossx said:
I know that I need to have Bluetooth on, how else would it work? I've tried everything. I can airdrop shit, just not handoff. So Bluetooth works, just not handoff. I've checked every option, made sure it's the same wifi and whatnot. It just doesn't work for me. Looks like a couple of other people are having the same issue based on Google results.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it "just works". If it's not working for you perhaps you're holding it wrong?
 
I updated to 8.1 and it does indeed "just work" now :)

pretty freaking awesomely, too
 
I have Yosemite, and 8.1 yet it doesn't work. Whatever, not the biggest deal since I won't really be typing anything on my phone. Just a bit annoying.
 
xIronCrossx said:
I have Yosemite, and 8.1 yet it doesn't work. Whatever, not the biggest deal since I won't really be typing anything on my phone. Just a bit annoying.
Click to expand...
but do you have that double entry that I have? (mine wouldn't work until I was able to delete all of my bluetooth entries and then pair them again from blank--and I'm sure you've searched this out but just in case I'll clarify that I had to pair them before it would work not just turn BT on).
 
mope54 said:
but do you have that double entry that I have? (mine wouldn't work until I was able to delete all of my bluetooth entries and then pair them again from blank--and I'm sure you've searched this out but just in case I'll clarify that I had to pair them before it would work not just turn BT on).
Click to expand...

No I don't think I have any double entires. All I have on my iPhone are the Macbook Pro and the one for my car. Also you can't/don't need to actually pair your phone with the laptop.

I think at this point I would have to log out of iCloud, turn off bluetooth, remove all profiles and whatnot. Then restart and try again, but that isn't worth it to me right now. I'll see if Apple has a fix or if someone else gets a fix. Doesn't seem to be that widespread/well-known yet.
 
xIronCrossx said:
No I don't think I have any double entires. All I have on my iPhone are the Macbook Pro and the one for my car. Also you can't/don't need to actually pair your phone with the laptop.
Click to expand...
something is odd or we're talking past one another

if you haven't done so yet, delete all those entries (you shouldn't have to log out of iCloud, I didn't anyway and that would be a colossal pain in the butt for everything to get wiped or duped on your device, and I didn't have to turn off BT; I only had to click on each entry and "forget this device" on my iPad and the iPad in my BT settings on my macbook)
once you've deleted all entries you should need to pair your device to your macbook
it shouldn't pair automatically without you going into bluetooth settings and accepting the pair code. I started to do this after reading in several sources that people were having trouble until they paired their devices...and I couldn't do it like others experienced in that apple forum thread because mine were greyed out and couldn't be deleted.
 
please try it...it should literally only take less than a minute or two and it might solve your issue. I'm really curious sorry to be so curious at your expense, but I've been dealing with it not working every since yosemite and 8.02 launched and it's finally resolved. whatever fix was coming from apple I think just arrived with 8.1 because this is the only time that it worked and I tried many things from various sources...but I did have to start fresh with the BT pairings before it would work.
 
Unless I've been reading wrong, you can't actually connect the iPhone to the MBP through bluetooth. I have them "paired" but they can't be connected.

I'll try it real quick.
 
you're right about the fact the iPhone and Macbook can't be "connected" and only paired--but I did just double check right now and I was able to handoff with my paired iPad without connecting (then it connected eventually but I already pulled up the page here I'm typing). I can't speak to getting this working on my iPhone yet, though, because I'm not willing to give up my jailbreak just yet. Curiosity got the best of me with regards to my iPad (well, I really wanted to use Hey Siri and this handoff thing where I thought it would make the most sense).
 
Ok wtf. So under my "Notes" I just decided to use my "new" iCloud account (I never made an actual iCloud account, used my gmail/apple account). Now the notes popped up, safari suddenly works too as do all the others I think. So it seems you have to choose the "iCloud" account in one of the apps to activate it unless you already had an an @icloud account before.
 
nice! and not sure if I helped you at all but thanks for indulging me so I could feel like I did a good deed for the day :)
 
Heh, well you made me recheck everything. So indirectly you did help, thanks :D

So I kind of have a "fix" for those who can't get it to work. Just make sure you are using an and actual iCloud account (username@icloud) for notes or email the first time and then it should sync up. I activated the iCloud Drive before I updated to Yosemite, or right as I did, and had to make a username@iCloud account at that time. It's synced up with my @gmail Apple account but it did add a separate iCloud email and account to my notes/email. So I'm assuming it had something to do with that.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Ok wtf. So under my "Notes" I just decided to use my "new" iCloud account (I never made an actual iCloud account, used my gmail/apple account). Now the notes popped up, safari suddenly works too as do all the others I think. So it seems you have to choose the "iCloud" account in one of the apps to activate it unless you already had an an @icloud account before.
Click to expand...
Yep, that seems to have done it for me as well. In Yosemite's iCloud preferences, I enabled Notes (which was unchecked), created an @iCloud address, allowed that @iCloud address for FaceTime and Messages and now I'm getting Handoff notifications in the Dock.

What a clusterfuck. Apple's software quality has really tanked hard recently.
 
It just seems like they didn't really test it out. If you are completely new to the Apple ecosystem, you have to make an @iCloud account so it won't affect you. But most of us never made one of those, we just have an iCloud account linked to another email. I'm surprised they never thought of that, or maybe just thought it wouldn't be an issue.

Calls and texts work flawlessly without any of that though.
 
I've always used my .edu account (it's linked to my iCloud account) so I don't know if you guys were experiencing a bug or if mine worked because I've always had iCloud enabled for safari (and notes) and some other things that I like to sync across devices.

it might have just reset the cloud for you because another issue I read when I was trying to trouble shoot was to delete everything on the cloud so it would be clean slate. that was related to the switch between the old cloud and the new Drive format. that might have been just for those of us on the betas.
 
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