alt Hacker News> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days
But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for there to even be two different modes.
Why is this still happening?
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My partner's hearing aid connects (via some radio protocol) to a device that then connects via bluetooth. Unfortunately, it presents itself as a headset, which causes... problems. For Android, they have to use an app from the play store that presents itself as an audio device and then sends that to the 'headset'.
Except for the "headphone" versus "headset" mode dichotomy that is inherent to Bluetooth, all those other issues are due to stupid product decisions that most OSes do to themselves independently on the same way.
If you use Linux + KDE, you can still use any microphone or headphone, many at the same time, or in whatever mode you want.
The absolute madness that is Bluetooth pairing between cars and cellphones is wild. If I get into my car and it decides to randomly pair with my wife's phone (who is inside the house) and I drive off, the whole infotainment system is locks up and dies until I get to my destination and turn off the car.
It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market.
Implementing special requirements is always inconvenient for users because no B2C wants to risk bad the-microphone-didn’t-work reviews, customer returns, and support tickets.
Nevermind coordinating with arbitrary USB microphone latency…I’ve got one with 250ms of it.