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Jean-Louis Gassée Column

One Step Closer December 6, 2000 Tempting as it might be, the title is not a reference to age-related dysfunctions in Florida, such as stochastic voting machines and 19th century electoral statutes. Someone did suggest, however, that we could generate publicity by offering free BeIA licenses for the purpose of building robust, unambiguous, citizen-friendly voting appliances. But legal counsel would never let us do that. Instead, I'll focus on the BlueTooth conference this week (12/4 to 12/7) in San Jose, CA. There's an excellent Web site, www.bluetooth.com, with a wealth of information on protocols, devices, piconets, scatternets, industry groups, hardware, software, interoperability with IrDA -- everything you need or don't want to know about BlueTooth. For an optimist such as yours truly, the importance of this week's event is that it gets us closer to a world of affordable connected devices. But critics now charge that we have a surfeit of wireless protocols. In their mind, we're in great danger of babelizing this new frontier. Other naysayers feel that we're too optimistic. They say that it took nearly ten years for USB to gain some kind of mainstream acceptance and many implementations still leave much to be desired. So who's right? Critics are right to suggest moderation. You can't really buy BlueTooth devices at Fry's today, and therefore, BlueTooth doesn't exist, yet. And, yes, the great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from, as Larry Tesler, a former Apple Fellow once joked. Consumers will be turned off by the confusion: RangeLan, Wi-Fi and, now, BlueTooth. Do they work together? Which one(s) will be Betamaxed? The news is mixed. Wi-Fi, a.k.a. 802.11b, and RangeLan compete for the same application space, wireless LANs, WLANs, connecting PC and peripherals, most of the time as an extension of an existing "conventional" wired Local Area Network, itself connected to the Net. If you read the specs, one calls itself 802.11, the other 802.11b. Today, they don't work together, but that could (should?) happen in Future Releases. Let's hope it does. BlueTooth belongs to another category -- WPANs, Wireless Personal Area Networks, with a 802.15 Working Group (see http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/ for more details. Personal Area Networks are supposed to mean an area of a few feet around one's person, as opposed to hundreds of feet for WLANs. For example, your PDA or your cell phone will offer a wireless earphone/microphone. No more unseemly wire between the two -- you can take notes while talking. Another application is wireless PC keyboards and mice. These exist today using ad hoc protocols, but they'll be more economical and easier to connect when BlueTooth becomes pervasive and also includes printer connections. In some ways, we're looking at a fairly normal network topology, with small capillary pipes feeding bigger ones and so on. In this view, BlueTooth feeds into 802.11 WLANs, rather than compete with them. Over time, we'll see if one or more of these standards get "perverted" to currently unforeseen uses, through performance tweaks or otherwise. After all, the floppy disk was initially designed for IPLs (Initial Program Loads), feeding code and micro-code updates into mainframes, remotely like BIOS updates, if you will. IBM had no idea it was inventing something that would last more than three decades, used on more than a hundred million computers. The question of speed of adoption remains, however, with bad memories of USB lingering. I submit, though, that BlueTooth is different. USB replaced a messy system of serial and parallel ports; it didn't unlock many new applications. Today it's mainly used for connecting printers, scanners, keyboards and mice, and the occasional floppy or CD-RW drive. There is still a wire and, contrary to our hopes, the connections are not as executive-proof as promised. Try putting this notebook to sleep with a USB mini-hub attached. With BlueTooth, wires disappear, something mobile users of computing and communication devices value. Now, as stated earlier, this is the promise, the standard is still "de facto," meaning unofficial. I doubt that we'll see any real (purchased at your favorite retailer) product before the second half of 2001. Hopefully, we'll have learned the lessons from USB. Tart-tongued miscreants say that BlueTooth will work because it doesn't need a stack from one half of Wintel and an OSR (OEM Service Release) from the other half. Let's hope they're right. I enjoy a WLAN as I write this. I'm ready for the next step in freedom and friendliness.

Past Columns: March 7, 2001 Intemperance Makes the Suit Look Bad February 7, 2001 The Web Device of Choice at Home January 17, 2001 Transfer of Power December 6, 2000 One Step Closer November 15, 2000 Thoughts on Comdex 2000 November 1, 2000 Watching the Pendulum October 4, 2000 Plus çà change... September 6, 2000 Connected Appliances: A Field Report August 16, 2000 Sub-PC vs. Appliances July 12, 2000 The Victim Microsoft June 7, 2000 The Power of Words May 31, 2000 The First Be Shareholders Meeting May 24, 2000 Intellectual Property and Internet Appliances May 17, 2000 Spreading the Virus May 10, 2000 Numbers and Feedback May 3, 2000 Manufacturing Consent

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