Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I am upvoting this because I was unaware Apple Watch used anything but standard Bluetooth pairing techniques. Since I'm not an iPhone user, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGSseon3C9w seems to be a somewhat okay video of the pairing process, and I have to admit, that looks kinda cool, but waaay over-engineered for the process.

View on HN

The "hold to the camera" thing looks like it's just for show, but it also makes sure the watch is close enough to the phone for pairing to happen. It also provides a little bit of visual feedback. One of those little Apple touches that adds to the feeling you get when you unbox their products.

The iOS pairing procedure for the 3rd gen AppleTV asks you to tap the phone to the ATV to pair it. The tapping doesn't do anything, it's only the proximity that matters.

http://www.imore.com/how-wirelessly-set-3rd-gen-apple-tv-any...

so, you don't think the white noise video encodes any information about the device being paired and is actually pre-recorded and is exactly the same for every pairing process. In other words, if you you try to pair two sets of devices in the same room at exactly the same time -- it would get confused?

It would probably get confused, or whatever watch can communicate with the phone first would be paired and the other would just time out.

Nothing in that video looks like the camera is facing the watch long enough to capture any important data. It might be watching for the <BACK and (I) icons on the screen just to hold off showing the sync video until the watch is in-hand.

it actually took me good 15-20 seconds or so to pair up (holding a camera pointing at the watch), that's why I made an assumption there is some encoding/decoding going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com