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Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

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Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#21

Post by [deleted] »

patwolf wrote: post #17
crazygringo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple engaged in a classic "brain rape" to extract value without cost. Hyperbolic, sexualized language isn't helpful here. Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? I don't see how this isn't Masimo's fault when they certainly had the money to do it. I know lots of cases where rival companies tried to hire engineers with highly domain-specific expertise away from rivals a…

> Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? Was Apple paying them what they were worth, or did they pay them more than they were worth in order to damage Masimo? I don't think we know enough to say one way or the other. There must be some level at which poaching employees with inflated salaries crosses the line into anticompetitive territory. Masimo is a profitable company,…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#22

Post by theamk »

Patents in question:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en

They look identical to me btw? both files on 2020-02 and have title of "User-worn device for noninvasively measuring a physiological parameter of a user". From summary:

> light source comprises LEDs and super-luminescent LEDs. The light source emits light at at least wavelengths of about 1610 nm, about 1640 nm, and about 1665 nm. In an embodiment, the detector comprises a plurality of photodetectors arranged in a special geometry comprising...

there are 30 claims and some parts of them seem to definitely be a prior art ("a storage device configured to at least temporarily store at least the measurement").. I wonder what's the real innovation is there?

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#23

Post by IlliOnato »

8ytecoder wrote: post #20
patwolf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? Was Apple paying them what they were worth, or did they pay them more than they were worth in order to damage Masimo? I don't think we know enough to say one way or the other. There must be some level at which poaching employees with inflated salaries crosses the line into anticompetitive territory. Masimo is a profitable company,…

They’re worth what precisely what someone is willing to pay them. Their expertise is probably more valuable for Apple than Masimo. It would make sense for them to be able to work at Apple then.

Not if, for example, equally qualified engineers not working for Masimo are not offered the same salaries.

Of course something like this is not easy to prove.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#24

Post by vaxman »

Anyway, there are reports from Bloomberg’s Apple reporter that Apple will ship all new models of watches with a different form factor and new features like BP monitoring in 2024.

PS: Was all set with an app design for the Samsung devices a few years ago, but Tizen turned out to be not worthy of any mindshare and I don’t support Google’s surveillance capitalism business model (so no WearOS for me). Meanwhile, Apple doesn’t have a well known procedure for vetting app developers enough to trust some with full access to their crypto-locked devices. With no other similar platforms, there is no real opportunity to advance mankind in this regard at this time anyway…but dang, love those Activity reminders /not

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#25

Post by vGPU »

patwolf wrote: post #17
crazygringo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple engaged in a classic "brain rape" to extract value without cost. Hyperbolic, sexualized language isn't helpful here. Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? I don't see how this isn't Masimo's fault when they certainly had the money to do it. I know lots of cases where rival companies tried to hire engineers with highly domain-specific expertise away from rivals a…

> Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? Was Apple paying them what they were worth, or did they pay them more than they were worth in order to damage Masimo? I don't think we know enough to say one way or the other. There must be some level at which poaching employees with inflated salaries crosses the line into anticompetitive territory. Masimo is a profitable company,…

They’ve already spent >60 million just on legal fees.

Somehow I very strongly doubt they’d have spent that much just paying their employees more.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#26

Post by peyton »

llm_nerd wrote: post #15
crazygringo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple engaged in a classic "brain rape" to extract value without cost. Hyperbolic, sexualized language isn't helpful here. Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? I don't see how this isn't Masimo's fault when they certainly had the money to do it. I know lots of cases where rival companies tried to hire engineers with highly domain-specific expertise away from rivals a…

[flagged]

My understanding is Masimo as a whole couldn’t get the thing working for whatever reason, so key people left for greener pastures. I think this outrage is misplaced.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#27

Post by vGPU »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #14
llm_nerd wrote: post #2

Initially I presumed this was a patent troll sitting on something obvious and trying to extort a big player. Reading about the actual story reveals a very different situation, and it's one in which Apple needs to pay an extremely heavy toll for scumbag behaviour. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-10-05... Apple did precisely the sorts of things that big companies are reviled for, and the only goo…

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer It isn't clear to me if Apple's internal team working on this was the original plan - think "embrace, extend, extinguish", or "we'll do the basics, everything else is a 'third-party opportunity'" - or if they were formed as a backstop in the event an acquisition or licensing deal didn't happen. See also the current situation with AliveCor over ECG tech in the Apple Watch. Bottom line, Masimo…

They will almost certainly settle, and very quickly in my opinion (also just a layman opinion however) because if Masimo is successful in forcing them to stop sales the next logical step would be to force them to disable the feature until a ruling is made otherwise.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#28

Post by kstrauser »

llm_nerd wrote: post #2

Initially I presumed this was a patent troll sitting on something obvious and trying to extort a big player. Reading about the actual story reveals a very different situation, and it's one in which Apple needs to pay an extremely heavy toll for scumbag behaviour. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-10-05... Apple did precisely the sorts of things that big companies are reviled for, and the only goo…

Alternatively, someone at Apple thought "we should add one of those pulse ox thingies like they've used in the doctor's office for the last 50 years into our next watch", saw that Masimo was a player in the space, met with them, and then decided they'd rather do it themselves.

This is not something Masimo invented themselves. The class of devices existed for decades before Masimo even existed. I'm not saying that Apple's in the right here -- I have no inside information giving me more perspective than anyone else reading this -- but it's far from clear that they did anything wrong.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#29

Post by paxys »

freedomben wrote: post #10
vGPU wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masimo is a $billions dollar company. The description of a “David and Goliath” battle is a tad misleading. Sure, they acted scummy, but this is just typical BigCorp behavior where one huge corporation steals from another huge corporation.

I disagree. > Apple, of course, is one of the largest and most powerful companies in history — it’s the first to hit a $3-trillion — that’s trillion, with a T — market cap. Apple is at least 100 times bigger than Masimo, 500x based on the numbers in the article. Sounds David and Goliath to me. Add in the despicable behavior and you've got a story where real life is more than fiction could do.

If both companies are able to afford tier A law firms then the relative size difference is meaningless. An extra trillion in market cap doesn't go any further in helping Apple's case.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#30

Post by throwup238 »

treesciencebot wrote: post #3

Masimo, the company who is suing apple, has a market cap around ~$6B. Apple's wearable business (which might include the audio products as well, I guess), at least according to the article, "generated $13.48 billion in revenue". Don't think this is as big of a threat as someone like Samsung suing iPhone.

> Don't think this is as big of a threat as someone like Samsung suing iPhone.

Samsung makes most of the displays Apple uses in iPhones and it's probably the most profitable deal Samsung has. They have a messy relationship but neither of them is going to rock the boat too much because no one else can meet Apple's demand and Samsung can't afford to lose that much revenue.

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