You should remove "Mac" from your article, sans to where you first found this issue out and what the Apple-specific nomenclature is.
This is simply a Bluetooth issue and why Bluetooth is bad if you care about audio quality.
This is simply a Bluetooth issue and why Bluetooth is bad if you care about audio quality.
I never had this problem with Pulseaudio and Blueman, for example. The microphone isn't even registered until I manually change modes for the connection.
Another annoying thing is that the mac is so aggressive when connecting to devices over BT. I regularly have to restart stuff because my mac hijacked the connection. It seems to do it even when the lid is closed.
For voice/HFP, I agree, and LC3 can't arrive soon enough. I'm actually really surprised Apple doesn't use anything proprietary/better than mSBC for their AirPods.
The real problem comes with the HFP profile. Lack of decent codecs, and bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth make it really hard to solve. Not to mention the vast majority of devices you own can't upgrade codecs, or just won't because there aren't incentives.
There's always the risk of unknown patent claims, but the same is true for any other codec not older than 15 or so years.
I can only suspect why it's still so rare, but my guess would be either a fear of unknown patent claims, a lack of readily available hardware implementations, or a combination of both.
And if you read the article, it is an Apple problem since macOs chooses the wrong bluetooth profile.
Let us see. Ah hear. Pipewire seems to support it already on Linux.
I mean, 4G has existed for over a decade and it supports 100Mbps bandwidths. With that bandwidth it could use uncompressed audio and support stereo for both output and input.
Regarding LC3, I've read people complain that it forces the Bluetooth Low Energy, removing a few features like multi-point connection and a few others.