alt Hacker NewsThe standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now?
Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?
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Neither Wifi nor Bluetooth are a 1:1 replacement for wireless USB, in that neither allow you to use a standard USB device without a wired path between the device and host.
In theory, Bluetooth ought to be the replacement for most use cases, and would simply require replacing your USB devices with Bluetooth devices. In practice, Bluetooth is still kind of terrible, so I'm tempted to say any alternative timeline where something else won the personal area network war would probably be better.
We still kind of do wireless USB, in that the standard for wireless mouse and keyboards is still not Bluetooth, but a dedicated USB dongle that ships with the device. Such options are available for wireless headsets as well, although Bluetooth seems to winning in that niche.
Better off with Bluetooth is something I never thought anyone would say.
> Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now?
Bluetooth is a nightmare of a standard. Up until very recently even pairing two devices was a non-deterministic operation. Apple went as far as creating their own chip with their own protocol for their headphones just not to have to deal with bluetooth.
Bluetooth is bad enough that wireless mice/keyboards usually have a USB dongle receiving what I guess is a proprietary RF protocol. Some wireless headphones have that too. And wifi requires too much power.