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Comment by can16358p | Hacker News Reader

The AirDrop randomly not working one is really manifesting at the most inconvenient times.

Apple simply won't fix it.

That's the problem with the "it just works" philosophy. When it doesn't... you have no idea what's wrong and no way to fix it. A bolted hood over the engine.

I'm always dumbfounded by people constantly praising AirDrop. It hasn't worked properly more often than it did. And that's not talking about the times when you send something, it gets accepted, and it just ends up in a void, not to be found anywhere.

At the end of the day, in most cases, it would be preferable to just connect the damn thing with a cable and send things that way. If you send a large file, it takes a while, and having to redo the process because of some bug kills any benefit from the convenience of not having to use a cable.

It’s always been flawless for me.

It uses Bluetooth to establish a connection so I wonder if that is the source of some peoples problems.

Maybe that's it. It is really dependent on the radio environment indeed. And it uses Wi-Fi Direct for large transfers.

Once I had weird dropouts streaming to a friend's Bluetooth speakers because it had weird interaction with my Apple Watch, my iPhone, and his iPhone. That was in a cabin basically in the middle of nowhere...

But that's basically my point. Wireless everything is cool and convenient at first sight, but then you often have to deal with all kinds of problems, making you wish you could just connect a cable, browse the file system, and exchange stuff that way.

I have a friend who connects his Android phone to his Macbook, and he drags and drops the photos in/out of storage. Simple, efficient, no need for any cloud, no need for internet/wireless connectivity, no need to wait for any syncing, it just works.

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