Apple chose to bypass Bluetooth v3.0 + HS altogether and move from the four year old v2.1 + EDR (as used on current Apple products like the iPhone 4 and the Macbook Pro range circa 2011) to Bluetooth 4.0, becoming the first manufacturer to do so.
The core feature of Bluetooth 4.0 is its "Bluetooth Low Energy" or BLE technology, which allows Bluetooth devices to communicate at around half the peak power consumption of the "classic" Bluetooth (down to one hundredth depending on usage), and is designed from the ground up to be used in devices powered by small, coin-cell batteries.
Other characteristics include a much longer range (up to 200m), 128-bit AES with Counter Mode CBC-MAC and application layer user defined security, a 6ms latency (compared to up to 100ms for the Classic Bluetooth).
The weak point of BLE though remains its transfer rate which is as low as one tenth of the full fat Bluetooth. But Bluetooth 4.0 offers the possibility to toggle between low power or high power modes, just like changing CPU speed in mains mode or battery mode.
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