What went wrong with wireless USB

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Other “wireless USB”-like eras and tech

  • Commenters note the article largely omits 802.11ad/ay “WiGig” docks that did USB + video and are still used for some VR headsets.
  • One phone (Essential) used wireless USB internally for magnetically attached modules.
  • A former wireless USB chipset line survives indirectly in RC control radios.

Core reasons wireless USB failed

  • Biggest practical issue: wired USB also supplies power. Wireless USB gave you wireless data but still needed a cable or batteries, weakening the value proposition.
  • Classic chicken‑and‑egg: laptops didn’t ship with it because there were no compelling peripherals; peripheral makers didn’t use it because no laptops had it, except via dongles.
  • Competing technologies (Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi, later WiGig) already covered many use cases “well enough.”
  • Some hardware underdelivered: early products often achieved speeds barely above USB FullSpeed and had real‑world problems like overheating in continuous‑use scenarios.
  • Economic timing: at least one chip company reports getting to good demo performance but running out of money during the Great Recession.

Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi, dongles, and mice/keyboards

  • Bluetooth’s early killer apps were headsets and car hands‑free; later, cheap combo Wi‑Fi+BT chipsets made BT “free to add,” so it became ubiquitous.
  • Wireless USB had to live on a separate radio/antenna and never got that cost advantage.
  • Many still dislike Bluetooth: flaky pairing, high audio latency, the “headphone vs headset” profile split that ruins mic + high‑quality audio, and platform quirks (cars, OSes).
  • Others argue BLE and better stacks have made BT usable; some proprietary dongles now just wrap BLE with extra encryption.
  • Debate over why dongled 2.4 GHz mice/boards persist: lower latency, pre‑pairing convenience, and BIOS/boot‑time usability vs interference problems near USB 3 ports.

File transfer and user abstractions

  • Several people lament that “wireless USB for file transfer” never materialized; instead they rely on Wi‑Fi plus ad‑hoc tools (scp, WebDAV, Bluetooth OBEX, WebRTC sites, syncthing, AirDrop).
  • There’s extended debate over whether mainstream users “don’t care about files” and just want photos/messages in apps, or whether they’ve been pushed away from a powerful file/folder model by product decisions and cloud lock‑in.

Protocol design, IP, and IoT

  • Some argue no new wireless protocol should ship without full IP support, to enable multi‑host peripherals and flexible topologies.
  • Others push back: IP increases attack surface, configuration complexity, and power use, and not all use cases (e.g., Zigbee‑style broadcast control) need it.
  • Thread is cited as a counterexample: full IPv6 yet low power; Zigbee praised precisely because it is non‑IP and stays local behind a hub.