Apple’s newly released MacBook Airs and Mac Minis released earlier today are the first hardware from Apple to support the bluetooth wireless standard, which features improved range and power consumption over previous Bluetooth standards.
While Bluetooth 4.0 was officially announced last June, the industry has been anything but swift to adopt the new specification. Apple’s newly released Mac Minis and MacBook Airs, however, do support the new specification, jumping straight from Bluetooth 2.1 to 4.0, skipping the bluetooth 3.0 spec entirely.
This push to employ new bluetooth standards is possibly due to Apple’s new position on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group board of directors, and will likely result in 3rd party bluetooth accessories that support the new standard becoming available in the near future.
Bluetooth 4.0 is much more refined than its predecessors, and includes “Classic Bluetooth,” “Bluetooth High Speed,” and “Bluetooth Low Energy” protocols. The high-speed mode is based on Wi-Fi, while the classic mode supports legacy protocols and the Bluetooth Low Energy mode is aimed at low-power applications.