“People have paid a lot of attention to two new features that arrived in the iPhone 4S: The much-improved camera and Siri, the new voice-powered digital assistant,” Darrell Etherington reports for GigaOM. “But the 4S also snuck in another feature upgrade, one that’s a ticking time bomb of potential goodness: Bluetooth 4.0. The tech is also present in Apple’s most recent Mac mini and MacBook Air releases.”
Etherington reports, “Bluetooth 4.0 paves the way for a future in which your MacBook Air, Mac mini or iPhone can passively monitor and keep abreast of everything going on in your house. Monitor the temperature of that roast you’re cooking, note when your solar array stops receiving direct sunlight, and have your cordless robot vacuum tell you when it needs to hit the charging station: All could be possible through future implementations of a low-power, direct-communication spec like Bluetooth 4.0. That’s the long-term play that Apple has made with the 4S.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Or control your thermostat…
http://www.nest.com
I’m getting one, and if it’s any good, I’ll get a second one!
… and combined with siri the Worlds your oyster.
Thanks Steve…!!!
Bluetooth 4.0 has that kind of range? My recollection is that earlier versions had a range of less than 1 meter / 1 yard.
Wow you are getting pathetic, this took me 3 seconds:
“The Bluetooth 4.0 specification also encourages the standard’s use at longer range, which will now be as far as 200 feet (61 metres), something very comparable to Wi-Fi.”
That’s it. I’m waiting until the next MBP upgrade before getting one.
naaa, you’ll will be waiting forever….
last time it was thunderbolt (a huge deal notwithstanding) next it’ll be BT4 (or something else)
It’s always something remarkable coming in 9mos or a year, Apple is constantly pushing. The good news is Apple products happen to have a remarkably high resale value. So buy when you need the product, and if something comes out that is a “must have” for you, you can easily sell you current product (at a very favorable price) and get it then.