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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

We used plain ol bluetooth for this 20 or so years ago. I haven't used AirDrop but assume it's got better UX, but otherwise, what makes it special?

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Speed, mostly. Ad-hoc wifi can push tens of MB/s, which matters when sharing photos and videos at today's sizes.

Yup, I use fsquirt.exe to transfer small files between my phone and laptop. But I have to grab a usb cable for anything bigger than a low-res picture.

AirDrop uses Bluetooth for local device discovery and then attempts a send over the following protocols:

1. local IP network, if available

2. ad hoc WiFi, if possible

3. the Bluetooth connection

4. fallback via Apple's servers (newest iOS only)

It's primary advantage is its ability to negotiate over a number of different interfaces and protocols, as needed.

You’re free to swap files via regular Bluetooth with an app that supports it.

AirDrop is fast (actual transfer happens over WiFi) and easy - makes it so you don’t need to know anything about Bluetooth to use it. It’s a challenge to find an alternative app with the same level of functionality.

Better UX that makes it actually usable

4k video isn’t exactly quick to transfer over Bluetooth

literally nothing, they just disabled blue tooth transfers on iOS and came up with airdrop as if it was something novel

There is nothing disabled, AirDrop just works so well. And AirDrop is novel, because still, there is nothing like it.

Except android nearby share. Still closed standard sadly, but at least works on Windows.

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