Mmm, undervoltiing CPU's was used by Pocket PC's and it's one of the alleged patent violations.
The patent in question involves powering down the CPU execution units (Fetch, Decode, ALUs, FPUs, VPUs, Load/Store) while maintaining power to the cache snooping circuitry, while also determined when the optimal times that it should be done.
Voltage and clock scaling were likely patented by Intel in the 90s. Apple's patent builds upon that with more granularity. Voltage and clock scaling are nice, but it essentially applies to the whole CPU. Apple's method basically powers down the instruction portion of the processor and maintains cache memory state with circuitry to determine when to do this.
Apple are alleging that HTC is in violation of their patents.
As the patent holder Appled is entitled to take action against whoever they want, whenever they want if they believe that their technology is being used without permission.
It is up to a court to decide and HTC has the right to defend themselves from the allegations.
At least you point out your bias. I would also not agree that Apple exists because of what they copied from Xerox. Woz certainly had plenty of good ideas on his own and Jobs is the best salesman in the world. However, as the Xerox case clearly pointed out, Apple and Microsoft clearly stole Xerox's designs - they had built an actual system, so it wasn't an "idea", but Xerox exercised their copyright and trademarks too late to pursue them and they hadn't patented the technology.
1) Woz was already out of the picture by the time the Lisa project rolled around
2) Apple stole nothing - they paid Xerox for the ideas they saw
3) You did at least get the Microsoft theft right
If you want to understand where the Mac came from, start with the Lisa:
The only real fault I can find with the above article is some obscure trivia about the round rectangles - despite that it appears to be one of the better summations of the time.
Comments
Mmm, undervoltiing CPU's was used by Pocket PC's and it's one of the alleged patent violations.
The patent in question involves powering down the CPU execution units (Fetch, Decode, ALUs, FPUs, VPUs, Load/Store) while maintaining power to the cache snooping circuitry, while also determined when the optimal times that it should be done.
Voltage and clock scaling were likely patented by Intel in the 90s. Apple's patent builds upon that with more granularity. Voltage and clock scaling are nice, but it essentially applies to the whole CPU. Apple's method basically powers down the instruction portion of the processor and maintains cache memory state with circuitry to determine when to do this.
Apple are alleging that HTC is in violation of their patents.
As the patent holder Appled is entitled to take action against whoever they want, whenever they want if they believe that their technology is being used without permission.
It is up to a court to decide and HTC has the right to defend themselves from the allegations.
At least you point out your bias. I would also not agree that Apple exists because of what they copied from Xerox. Woz certainly had plenty of good ideas on his own and Jobs is the best salesman in the world. However, as the Xerox case clearly pointed out, Apple and Microsoft clearly stole Xerox's designs - they had built an actual system, so it wasn't an "idea", but Xerox exercised their copyright and trademarks too late to pursue them and they hadn't patented the technology.
1) Woz was already out of the picture by the time the Lisa project rolled around
2) Apple stole nothing - they paid Xerox for the ideas they saw
3) You did at least get the Microsoft theft right
If you want to understand where the Mac came from, start with the Lisa:
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/apple-lisa-history.html
The only real fault I can find with the above article is some obscure trivia about the round rectangles - despite that it appears to be one of the better summations of the time.
Sorry, "stole" is too strong a description, but they definitely copied elements of Xerox's design:
for which they paid the right to do so...
Xerox didn't know how to capitalize on what they had so they showed others what they created in exchange for money.
So, how exactly do you steal something you paid for? Must be some new alternative definition of "stole" I'm not yet familiar with...