191–200 of 357 posts
Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch. The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red…
Software patents are a scourge.
Few tears will be shed for Massimo (or Qualcomm) but the next victim could be a much smaller company, maybe one that would be more of a competitor. I don't like the current patent regime but I do believe enforcement should apply to everyone, not just players who lack the money to rig the game.
Did the Watch Series 9+ incorporate a new sensor or different algorithm? I have an older model that has always had blood oxygen (and it was never disabled, as it was for the 9+).
Apple only disabled the pulse ox sensor on watches they sold, distributed, or replaced after the ruling. I don't think Apple disabled a working pulse ox sensor on anyone's watch other than repairs.
Been holding off buying a watch till glucose monitoring hits. Much like fusion that is continuously imminent though
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They will be fine, but maybe they want to be FANG rich. You do not get there if the already big companies play by different rules and can out spend the minute you pose a threat.
Maybe if Masimo had made Lamego a significant shareholder, he wouldn't have left his "CTO" role to become a mere Apple employee. Masimo is an $8b company. They created a spinoff called Cercacor which Lamego got to be CTO of. My best guess is it wasn't a real startup like we're used to in the Silicon Valley sense. There wasn't any real opportunity for him to gain generational wealth there if he was successful. Apple n…
It’s mindblowing how big of a gap this is for these non-tech companies. I work for a company that sold to PE. The owners walked away with the vast majority of a 1.5 billion deal.
I asked if employees were given anything. “Sure. Some got as much as 50k!” I was told.
Using some standard equity math for early engineers, I back of napkined that the 25 year tenure engineers, if they were at big tech, should have gotten low 7 figures. Nope. They got 50k out of 1.5 billion.
(No, PE had no say on how that 1.5 billion was divided up for those of you quick to blame PE.)
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You can do it by using interstitial fluid, which is how CGMs work. But, in short, no, not yet: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/do...
They're all on a subscription model, you're spending who-knows-how-much per year on a new sensor every few days/weeks. Afraid it'd feel like a prickleburr stuck to me constantly.
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How is that an example of Apple driving a company into bankruptcy to acquire their assets? Judging from the Wikipedia article, it looks like Exponential Technologies made a good PowerPC CPU, but Motorola promised they'd be able to catch up, and it's safer to bet on a big company that you've been doing business with than to rely on a startup for a critical component. Licensed Mac clones were only available for two yea…
When they started, they were producing for multiple small customers. Apple was frustrated with Motorola and approached them but demanded they massively increase their production capacity (Apple's model for dominating a supplier... put them in debt and beholden to them for orders) and effectively dominated them as a customer... Then used them to negotiate a better price with Motorola, dumped their purchase contract fo…
> This matter was settled during the fourth quarter of 1999 for an amount not material to the Company's financial position or results of operations.
If Apple did pay $500 million, I think that would have been material to the company's financial position, as their profit that year was $601M.
Again, are there any examples that are less debatable and/or more recent? I don't have a dog in this fight. But if Apple is infamous for this behavior, it seems like there would be stronger examples.
1. See page 59: https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive...
Massimo invented this technology (yay Massimo!) in the 90s yet their Japanese patents [1] weren't considered prior art (WTF?) because of technical legal reasons. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002542493A5/en%EF%BF%BC So I suppose if Massimo is going to use a technical legality to extend then Apple can use a technical legality to avoid.
Masimo only refined pulse oximetry in the 90s, as pulse oximetry was invented in the 1970s (prior oximeters did not resemble the devices seen today). Everything after that has been tweaks/improvements to the base method, but I wouldn't call them the inventors of the technology. The only IP that companies can own now are specific methods/improvements, not the base idea of measuring SpO2 with light. All Apple has to do…
These were NOT small devices like the inexpensive fingertip versions you can buy now over the counter; rather, they were big boxlike machines, perhaps 2 feet x 1.5 feet x 8 inches high. They were SO heavy (I'd estimate 25 pounds) they were attached to a stainless steel rolling cart.
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Software patents are a scourge.
I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather than engage in a licensing deal.