Some features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are dependent on Bluetooth 4.0. Does your Mac have what it takes?

There are a lot of cool features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite this fall. One of the most hotly anticipated is Handoff, which enables you to pick up where you left off in an email, a document and other work between iOS and OS X devices. Handoff is elegantly choreographed dance between devices, operating systems and protocols. It's partly dependent on Bluetooth 4.0, the most recent widespread deployment of the popular short-distance wireless communication protocol, which includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE). So, how can you tell if your Mac is properly equipped to take advantage of it?

Bluetooth 4.0 is included in most phones, iPod touches and iPads that will be capable of running iOS 8 when it comes out this fall. (The iPad 2 supports Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, but all other iOS 8-capable devices are equipped with Bluetooth 4.0.)

Aug 01, 2016  Connect the Pi to the Internet, and you have a smart space that listens for local Bluetooth devices and relays the identity and MAC address of all Bluetooth devices in range up to the Internet. Jan 07, 2017  DEF CON 24 - Anthony Rose, Ben Ramsey - Picking Bluetooth Low Energy Locks a Quarter Mille Away - Duration: 42:23. DEFCONConference 11,899 views.

1. Jul 14, 2020  Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5 has been around since 2016 with the most recent version 5.2 published just this year. There’s not much hardware out there that’s using the new hotness.
2. May 25, 2015  The team has demonstrated how easy it is to monitor and record Bluetooth Low Energy signals transmitted by IoT devices, including mobile phones, wearable devices, and iBeacons. The protocol Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was released in 2010 and it is designed to implement a new generation of services for mobile applications.
3. Stop Bluetooth Low Energy devices discovery. Clear all devices collected by the BLE discovery module. Show discovered Bluetooth Low Energy devices. Ble.enum MAC. Enumerate services and characteristics for the given BLE device. Hacking a Loccess smartlock using bettercap.
4. Since the release of iOS 5 (Q4 2011), Windows Phone 8.1 (Q3 2014), BlackBerry 10 (Q1 2013), and Android Jelly Bean (4.3 - Q3 2012), mobile phone operating systems have supported a further subset of Bluetooth protocols known as Bluetooth Low Energy ('Bluetooth LE').

Unfortunately, it's not quite that clear cut on the Mac side of things. The cutoff starts somewhere in 2011:

• The Mac mini and MacBook Air were both updated with Bluetooth 4.0 support in 2011.
• The MacBook Pro and iMac added it a year later in 2012.
• The Mac Pro languished without it until the new black model debuted in December 2013.

You can check for yourself if you're not exactly sure which Mac model you have. It's a little convoluted, so bear with me and follow these instructions to find out.

To determine your Mac's Bluetooth version

1. Click the  menu.
2. Select About This Mac.
3. Click on the More Info... button.
4. Click on the System Report... button.
5. Select Bluetooth from the sidebar on the left, underneath 'Hardware.'
6. Scan down the list of information until you find 'LMP Version.'

If your Mac is equipped with Bluetooth 4.0, LMP Version will say 0x6. Anything lower than that is an older version of Bluetooth.

Does your Mac come with Bluetooth 4.0, or are you going to need a new system to take full advantage of Yosemite and iOS 8 when they're released this fall? Post your thoughts in the comments.

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Bluetooth Hacking Software

Hackaday was at HOPE last weekend, and that means we got the goods from what is possibly the best security conference on the east coast. Some of us, however, were trapped in the vendor area being accosted by people wearing an improbable amount of Mr. Robot merch asking, ‘so what is Hackaday?’. We’ve all seen The Merchants Of Cool, but that doesn’t mean everyone was a vapid expression of modern marketing. Some people even brought some of their projects to show off. [Jeff] of reelyActive stopped by the booth and showed off what his team has been working on. It’s a software platform that turns all your wireless mice, Fitbits, and phones into a smart sensor platform using off the shelf hardware and a connection to the Internet.

[Jeff]’s demo unit (shown above) is simply a Raspberry Pi 3 with WiFi and Bluetooth, and an SD card loaded up with reelyActive’s software. Connect the Pi to the Internet, and you have a smart space that listens for local Bluetooth devices and relays the identity and MAC address of all Bluetooth devices in range up to the Internet.

Hacking Mac For Low Energy Bluetooth Speaker

The ability to set up a hub and detect Bluetooth devices solves the problem Bluetooth beacons solves — identifying when people enter a space, leave a space, and with a little bit of logic where people are located in a space — simply by using what they’re already wearing. Judging from what [Jeff] showed with his portable reelyActive hub (a Pi and a battery pack) a lot of people at HOPE are wearing Fitbits, wireless headphones, and leaving the Bluetooth on the phone on all the time. That’s a great way to tell where people are, providing a bridge between the physical world and the digital.