bsimpsen

randominternetperson said:

SpamSandwich said:

rotateleftbyte said:

sog35 said:

Here. We. Go.

I think we will be seeing an iOS desktop very soon..

Hopefully in 5 years Apple is almost 100% vertically integraded and does not have to rely on any vendor to provide parts.

Welcome to seeing reports of all the hundreds (if not more) of patent lawsuits filed against Apple the day that this is announced especially in the Radio space where there are literally thousdands of applicable patents. Buying from Broadcom takes a lot of that pain away.
This could tie Apple up in legal knots for years and years. Sometimes it is cheaper and easier just to pay Broadcom.

I'd also expect real estate prices in East Texas (close to the courthouse) will rise significantly if Apple does this.

The “venue shopping” type of lawsuits commonly filed in Texas are going to disappear. Apparently you missed this huge development.

http://fortune.com/2017/05/22/texas-patent-supreme-court/

Unfortunately, I believe you're misinterpreting that ruling.  Apple has a legal presence in Texas, so they are fair game to be sued there.  If Apple were some mom-and-pop company without stores and employees in Texas, it would be a different story.

I think it's you that's misinterpreting. Here's the operative quote "In that decision, the top court had found the specific rules of the Patent Act, which require a plaintiff to sue companies where they are incorporated, applied despite rules to the contrary in the general venue law."

It matters not where the defendant (Apple) is incorporated. The plaintiff must be incorporated in Texas to file suit in Texas.

mtbnut said:

What reason would Apple have NOT to buy Imagination Technologies? Seems like a no-brainer, akin to them buying PA Semi.

PA Semi and Intrinsity were a different kind of semiconductor play. PA Semi was acquired for their expertise in processor design. Note that Apple discarded PA Semi's PowerPC designs, so they were not interested in that CPU architecture, they were interested in the team's skill set. Intrinsity was acquired for their optimization expertise which one would expect to benefit all Apple chip efforts, not just CPU. Apple also acquired GPU expertise in Florida (I forget the details of that acquisition).

Other customers help pay for Imagination's) GPU efforts, but don't have the resources to field superior implementations of the technology. Imagination also contains a lot of uninteresting (and seemingly unprofitable) baggage (IOT, MIPS, etc). Those are two reasons not to acquire the company. Imagination also has a patent portfolio that probably protects Apple. That's a reason to continue the relationship.

So long as Apple can field the best implementations of ARM and PowerVR, why not allow competitors to help support the development of the underlying architectures? This also allows Apple to pick and choose future employees who'll have experience with ARM and PowerVR. If they roll their own custom designs, there will be no external pool of talent to draw from, at least initially.

The Lutron in-wall switch is limited to 5A resistive loads (600W) and so could not be used with most fireplace/heater units. It's also a violation of the National Electrical Code to use a wired-in switch that's not capable of carrying full circuit load, or a wired-in dimmer to control outlets of any kind. That said, the Lutron hardware works superbly in our house.

I'd not be surprised if Tim Cook's home is filled with a mix of commercially available HomeKit gear as well as pre-production and full custom solutions. My garage doors are bridged to HomeKit via a Raspberry Pi and I'm in the process of bringing up other custom HomeKit solution that way.

I think this will be the year that HomeKit starts to shine as Apple responds to Alexa to prevent Alexa from responding to me.