Apple Patents Wireless Charging 253
GabriellaKat writes "Via El Reg: 'Apple is trying to patent wireless charging, claiming its magnetic resonance tech is new and that it can do it better than anyone else. This would be cool if its assertions were true. Apple's application, numbered 20120303980, makes much of its ability to charge a device over the air at a distance of up to a meter, rather than requiring close proximity. The Alliance For Wireless Power, which also touts long-range juicing, will no doubt be comparing Apple's designs to its own blueprints.'"
Worlds Gone Mad (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Worlds Gone Mad (Score:2, Interesting)
Standards are for losers. Winners force proprietary systems into the market to further enhance their dominance.
Re:Patent Troll (Score:2, Interesting)
Is any of Apple's current product capable of wireless charging? Did they develop any of the technology, as in doing the research?
Nah. The new Lumia and Nexus 4 can do wireless charging. Those happen to be Microsoft and Google's flagship phones. Apple's phones don't do it yet, so they want to sue this competitive disadvantage out of existence. I guess they are unable to compete otherwise ...
... it may be time to start selling it off and taking your gains.
If you own AAPL
Re:Worlds Gone Mad (Score:3, Interesting)
There's nothing technically new in Apple's patent. What the patent is about is using a well-known wireless charging technique to charge a wireless powered local computing environment (as opposed to some other kind of device).
Apple basically missed the boat on wireless power, and now they are trying to grab whatever ridiculous patent they can to have a little bit of leverage.
Hopefully, the rest of the industry will tell them to go take a hike on making compliant products, and then sue Apple into oblivion for violating existing patents.
Re:Worlds Gone Mad (Score:5, Interesting)
- U.S. Patent 0,685,953 - Apparatus for Utilizing Effects Transmitted from a Distance to a Receiving Device through Natural Media - 1899 June 24
and so on and so forth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nikola_Tesla_patents)
Re:It gets worse! [Re:Fuck your ecosystem] (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's say you wanted to use Bluetooth to talk to an iPod or an iPad. You'd think you could just buy a Bluetooth module from, say, Roving Networks - say, the RN-42 [rovingnetworks.com], and then connect it to your PIC/Arduino and start sending Hello World, right?
WRONG!
You're grossly overstating things. If you just want to "Hello World" with an iOS device (i.e., do standard things like OBEX or A2DP), you can just use Bluetooth-standard components and protocols. As Apple's documentation [apple.com] says, "Third-party accessories can use the iPod Accessory Protocol (iAP) to access advanced features of iOS devices. One such feature is the ability to communicate securely with third-party iOS applications via the iOS External Accessory Framework." (see page 21).
So, as you can see, you only need to support iAP if you want to do Apple-specific things. You can easily empirically verify that standard BT features don't need iAP support by noting that you can pair a generic Bluetooth headset (including ones that predate the iPod Touch) with an iOS device, and it will work. You don't need to get a special "Made for iPhone" headset.
Re:It gets worse! [Re:Fuck your ecosystem] (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer recently submitted a grant proposal about a device that could potentially connect to an iPod over Bluetooth, and one of the grant reviewers nailed us over MFi licensing. But even aside from that...
From Roving Networks' website:
"All products designed to connect to iPhone's, iPod's and iPad's including those that incorporate the Roving Bluetooth APL module must be registered and approved with Apple's Made for iPod (MFi) program."
From Apples' website:
"Developers who wish to develop electronic accessories for iPhone, iPad or iPod using licensed components and/or software should join the MFi Program. Companies, organizations, government entities and educational institutions are eligible to apply. Case developers, app developers and developers of accessories that only use standard technology (e.g., Bluetooth Low Energy or standard Bluetooth profiles supported by iOS) do not need to join the MFi Program."
So while you are right that a standard Bluetooth profile (e.g. headset) doesn't require MFi licensing, which of these standard Bluetooth profiles [apple.com] would you use for your Hello World example?
And just keep in mind that Android support requires NONE of this MFi shit. No special iAP authentication chip. No need to shoehorn yourself into a standard profile to avoid having Apple run a credit check on you. No onerous restrictions on hobbyists or small businesses which have no mass manufacturing capability.