Apple is quietly replacing noise cancellation because ongoing patent lawsuit • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is quietly replacing noise cancellation because ongoing patent lawsuit

#21

Post by rasz » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

c7b wrote: post #4

Wouldn't be the first time that Apple is nerfing perfectly well-working hardware. I never thought about Airpod updates, but according to their site they are applied automatically if you're in the vicinity of an iPhone/iPad/Mac and they're being charged. Does anyone know more details about it / how to prevent updates? Do you need to keep them away from Apple devices while charging? Does it matter whether they're paire…

>nerfing perfectly well-working hardware

S3TC, texture compression on mobile killed after S3 lawsuit

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/itc-judge-rules-tha...

The irony? Apple invented this very technique, encoding 4 colors using 2 values. Hoffert work at Apple Advanced Technology Group and consequent patents from 1990 (US5046119A) for Apple Video 'road pizza' codec, except S3 their patent added "for texture compression" at the end. The patent is about dividing colorspace between two points and is directly copied from mode 0xC0 of the original Apple Video codec. ~10 years later S3 sues and wins because Apple is somehow incompetent at proving prior art.

https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Apple_RPZA#0xC0:_4_Colo...

    color0 = colorB
    color1 = (11 * colorA + 21 * colorB) / 32
    color2 = (21 * colorA + 11 * colorB) / 32
    color3 = colorA

https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/S3_Texture_Compression DXT2/DXT3:

    0 color0
    1 color1
    2 (2*color0 + color1) / 3
    3 (color0 + 2*color1) / 3

Re: Apple is quietly replacing noise cancellation because ongoing patent lawsuit

#22

Post by MichaelZuo » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #12

MichaelZuo wrote: post #10

Hard to say anything meaningful without knowing more about the state-of-the-art in noise cancellation algorithims. Which I imagine involves a lot of closely guarded secrets.

If they patented, they aren’t closely guarded.

The techniques needed to actually recreate it is very likely closely guarded, since modern patents can be very vague.

Re: Apple is quietly replacing noise cancellation because ongoing patent lawsuit

#23

Post by ganoushoreilly » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #13

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed something within the ANC codebase, they confirmed as much. It's also not disputed that it's of a different / lower quality than before (if you can tell or not is up for debate). The APM already have issues with reliability as is so i'm sure this is only bound to make people more upset.

I don't doubt at all that something could have changed, or even that it changed for the worse, but the extraordinary claim ("Apple broke it intentionally or negligently because of a patent lawsuit") demands a bit more evidence than anonymous speculation on a web forum.

Well they've already acknowledge the changes in the firmware, so our interpretations aside, they have materially altered it. Now the question becomes is there a user agreement that allows software updates / changes that may limit or restrict features in future upgrades, that i'm not aware of.

The nature of the software change was an intentional action, the result of which may not have been the outcome but it was still intentional. That's their argument.

Re: Apple is quietly replacing noise cancellation because ongoing patent lawsuit

#24

Post by ganoushoreilly » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

sam_dal wrote: post #8

Can Jawbone (or the troll) keep the patent private if it was funded by DARPA / public taxes ?

This is another can of worms that we may need to open. There is not an insignificant amount of products built off research and or original source paid for by the government. The intel community is full of companies that start this way, as is medical.

I'm not sure where or how to get that worked, but it is a worthwhile conversation.