loquitur

Refresher:  There are two parallel systems involved with patent validity.

One is the patent office itself who issued the patents and wants to nullify them
saying they were overbroad and anticipated by network standards committee
documents (RFCs) fleshing out end-to-end encryption.  The PTAB authority
has domain-level experts.

The other system is the courts, who use different standards, and non-expert lay juries
including the ones attached to the infamous Eastern District of Texas who are easily
swayed by lawyers in the adversarial system.

The Supreme Court has commented that it's strange to have two systems, but
Congress designed it this way and only the legislative branch can try to straighten the
messy system out with new law.   So, it's a turf war.

Meanwhile the security standards were implemented by different companies (including
Cisco, Apple, and Microsoft) in different ways.  These companies rolled out actual
products, but VirnetX peddled the overbroad patent claims saying they were "first".

Dr. Short may have had some nifty implementation wrinkle, but VirnetX wants folks to
believe they invented end-to-end encryption, when what they do is basically implement
DNS lookups to secure domains ending in .scom.   This is not stuff that appears as
novel in textbooks on network security, just a workman-like engineering effort
subject to multiple re-invention.

To add to the insult, VirnetX thinks their one improvement idea is worth multiple
hundreds of millions, or a significant percentage of sales.   The iPhone utilizes literally
thousands of hacks -- Apple and the rest of the industry would pay this amount only
for complete bundles of thousands of patents from established cellphone technology
companies like Qualcomm and ye olde Motorola.   So the issue of proper "apportionment" is
in flux.   Adding to all that is the Supreme Court decision in Alice v. CLS Bank,
which since 2014 has provided a dim view of software patents in general.

Since VirnetX conned some patent clerk to accept broad language in their issuance
which may even be upheld by appeals courts, they may yet win on a technicality,
but it won't be because they invented *the* way to turn an iMessage from the color green
(unsecure SMS) to the color blue (a bit more secure, until backup-to-iCloud at least).

thrang said:

Apple seems insanely careful to NOT do what she says is endemic in the tech industry. It doesn't mean they don't swing and miss on occasion, but I suspect Apple is treading VERY deliberately with Health initiatives...

True, because (and you likely know this but not many others) the chairman of the board of Apple is Dr. Art Levinson, erstwhile CEO of biotech giant Genentech until they were absorbed by Roche.   He certainly knows about proceeding deliberately with the inherently conservative FDA, achieving successful scientific outcomes with statistical significance, and marketing any resulting medical products with aplomb, not bombast.   Dr. Levinson is an enormous behind-the-scenes mover and shaker of Apple Inc.

Massiveattack87 said:

[....]
Apple Car has never made sense. 

Since the Tesla Model 3 debuted as a minimalist software-driven iPad on wheels, indeed, an Apple effort never made sense. (Although I don't drink Elon Musk Koolaid, I'm quite happy with my Tesla, only needing windshield washer fluid and tires over the last five years.)

What value did they think they would add?  Apple doesn't do much in the way of batteries, etc. I'd really like to know
from the ex- amps among the 2,000 what Apple thought their angle would be over just being a "me too" EV.
Further, why did it take them that long to "say no" -- just bureaucracy?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my stereo(!) class-A amplifier Apple iPod Hi-Fi is still going strong,
not using the decrepit iPod connectors (or the useless boom-box battery mode), but as a wired
sound bar for my kitchen TV.  If I want to get really fancy, I suppose I could airplay something
to it using ye olde airport express connected via the optical jack!  (Old farts at play.)

I'm very skeptical of this chip-binning-due-to-flaws notion. As yields improve, a chip customer
might not be able to get enough off-spec chips to match the market. They'd have to eventually
ship full-spec chips and somehow "nerf" the functionality before incorporation into products.

But if they can do that at the outset (turn off a CPU/GPU, cut lines to a cache, fiddle with
frequencies and firmware), isn't the more likely explanation ithat the 18's are exactly
an 18 pro with functionality reduced by firmware/circuitry hacks at the nano level?

This was actually a time-honored tradition in the days of the "mainframe". Models would
ship with instruction set add-ons (like better floating-point or string-related instructions,
or maybe a "population count" instruction which the NSA supposedly liked for cryptography).  
But the shipped machines, for manufacturing efficiency, had exactly the same parts -- they
just needed the extra stuff to be enabled in the field, for $ of course!

Oh, and there was such a thing as "reverse binning".  A possibly apocryphal story
involved legendary supercomputer designer Seymour Cray, who was upset that
a more fleshed-out design couldn't be made to run as fast with a full-complement
of parts.  It turned out that the first few transistors/ICs were special faster "quantity one"
one-offs from the supplier, but couldn't be made available with full-speed spec
in larger quantity. Perhaps the truth was that the quantity one parts were just a teaser
and they just wanted more money to scale up.

mikethemartian said:

Rayz2016 said:

Thrashman said:

 Coming out. - Not sure what you do in your private life is anyone’s business- so not sure why you bring it up.

Someone asked her what her proudest moment was; she answered honestly.

 Do you think she should have said, "learning to ride a unicycle" just to protect your delicate self?

If I could learn to ride a unicycle it would be my proudest moment. Especially if I could juggle at the same time. :-)

Well, yeah!  My grad school adviser (same as for Ken Thompson at Cal Berkeley, of Unix fame) did that trick.
That would be Elwyn Berlekamp of M.I.T. (prof at age 23), and chairman of three departments at UCB (math,
computer science, and electrical engineering), R.I.P.   One of his fave things (besides juggling 5 golf balls off
the floor whilst chatting with his students) was to ride thru the halls of Berkeley's Evans (Cory?) Hall on a
unicycle while juggling four hatchets.  Yup, the good ole days, before Bell Labs Unix, thence
BSD, formed the basis of the Apple Unix kernel.

iPhone Nein might not sell well in Germany.

danox said:

coolfactor said:

I never did get an iSight or Hi-Fi. Wishing I had, though.

The Apple hi-fi has a 3.5 audio jack, which means you can still use it today if you have one. Wired connections work that way too bad the original HomePod doesn’t have any, I wanted to buy a pair, but the lack of wired connections was a huge stop sign. Speakers good ones last for decades, Bluetooth/Airplay who knows?

Yup, I still use the iPod Hi Fi everyday, as a "soundbar" for a small kitchen TV (24" Vizio, cuz built-in Airplay).
Class D amps, engineering managed by "Podfather" Jon Rubenstein.  Works great!

Kind of like how the iPhone 9 never really sold well in Germany, which they called the iPhone "Nein".

It does appear to be of greater import than the "How many R's are there in 'strawberry'" problem.

(Currently Siri/Apple Intelligence answers with "two" since it seems to be based upon the ChatGPT 4o
family. ChatGPT o1 answers differently, but who knows when Apple will point to a better model?)

However, the elephant-in-the-room remains the "your AI violates our copyright" stance.
I haven't heard much about that lately. Unfortunately Apple is the largest of the large
"deep pockets" so expect more turmoil in this arena.