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A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

social.treehouse.systems

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Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#231

Post by brundolf »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #224
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #177

Patents are interesting. IIRC, Apple has a patent on a method of creating a fast Gaussian blur by combining multiple low-radius blurs to create a large radius blur in real-time. I remember looking into this because I was so confused how Apple could create a fast real-time Gaussian blur with a large radius with no latency. Even game developers fail to do this, utilizing other blurs like box blurs instead to create the…

I have a question, suppose I came up with something similar or even identical on my own, wrote the code and published it, and I have no clue that a patent exists, am I liable in any way? Isn’t absurd that algorithms and mathematical solutions can be patented?

Yes, that's how patents work. I believe patents normally expire ~20 years after being filed. The idea is to incentivize people/companies to invest the resources in solving really hard problems, knowing they'll be able to make back their investment in the time before it expires (at which point everyone can then use it)

Software patents are controversial because of the rate things move in software; a software discovery from 20 years ago is likely worthless by the time the patent expires. I think the window should be shorter for software (5 years? 3 years?), just enough to make back the investment but not milk it until it's dead

But as they go, this kind of real problem-solving is one of the more defensible kinds of software patents imo. Many software patents out there are things like "do X but store it in a database", which is obviously nonsense

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#232

Post by dmitriid »

mrtksn wrote: post #223
dmitriid wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But only some of that was paid by ads. Ah yes. They were paid by altruists who had the foresight to know that 30 years later they will be able to track everyone and collect their dues.

Those who relied on making profits were decimated as VC funded user experience was much superior. It was an era of land-grab.

Those who relied on anything were decimated in the bubble of 2001.

Also, you're pretending that all of those sites were making a profit, or operated under the assumption of making a profit. There was a lot of money thrown at any and all internet companies by the end of 1990s. It's just that the market was much smaller.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#233

Post by Nextgrid »

kkielhofner wrote: post #188
kergonath wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unsurprisingly the real reason is “Apple was granted a patent on this over a decade ago and no one is risking an Apple patent infringement lawsuit over laptop speakers”. It is not exclusive. I cannot believe that there is only one way of doing something like this. They just need to care enough to put some R&D money into this.

Sure, but as I've noted elsewhere if it goes to court it ends up in the hands of a jury. Let's just say that 12 random jurors off the street aren't exactly the HN crowd. In fact, I doubt a single HN user would ever make it on a jury for anything technical unless they lied or deliberately mislead counsel during juror questioning. "Juror number 7, what is your occupation?" "I'm a software developer..." "We move to dism…

Out of curiosity, why would they not want to select someone who's a subject-matter expert? Is it regulatory capture or is there a more innocent reason?

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#234

Post by Nextgrid »

mrtksn wrote: post #73
jacksgt wrote: post #61

Off topic: it's such a breath of fresh air to read this content without 1) having to close half a dozen popups and 2) all in a single post and not painfully spread out across multiple messages.

Doesn't do targeted ads, so doesn't have to have an EU cookie popup. Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app. Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog. The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to. Everything is much more fu…

> The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs

And even that, content distribution was handled by a volunteer happy to chip in a few bucks to pay for shared hosting.

Content distribution (and infrastructure in general) nowadays is cheaper than ever thanks to technological advances (today's entry-level MacBook is more powerful than a lot of servers from 10 years ago).

There is absolutely a way to distribute content for very cheap nowadays if you know how to - you just have to avoid the rent-seekers like cloud providers.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#235

Post by Nextgrid »

ziftface wrote: post #96
makapuf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributing a static HTML page content does not need a VC. Nginx on an RPI on my home connection does provide sufficient level of performance and availability. If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?

I really hope you're right but I don't think it will play out that simply for mastodon. I have high hopes for it, hopefully these problems are solved but with this rate of growth, what will happen when there's a big political event that used to cripple Twitter back in the day? I don't think tips will cover it.

Mastodon (and the general "fediverse") is an inefficient disaster by design, but if you ignore that and go back to old-school forum software, your Raspberry Pi will be just fine for a few hundred concurrent users (and way more for read-only traffic).

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#236

Post by Nextgrid »

makapuf wrote: post #86
mrtksn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't do targeted ads, so doesn't have to have an EU cookie popup. Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app. Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog. The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to. Everything is much more fu…

Distributing a static HTML page content does not need a VC. Nginx on an RPI on my home connection does provide sufficient level of performance and availability. If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?

> If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?

Hetzner will give you a powerful server for ~30 bucks/month and includes 20TB of bandwidth for free (and overages are charged at ~1$/TB, almost 90x less than AWS). That's enough to host and serve a lot of content.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#237

Post by gptgpp »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #224
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #177

Patents are interesting. IIRC, Apple has a patent on a method of creating a fast Gaussian blur by combining multiple low-radius blurs to create a large radius blur in real-time. I remember looking into this because I was so confused how Apple could create a fast real-time Gaussian blur with a large radius with no latency. Even game developers fail to do this, utilizing other blurs like box blurs instead to create the…

I have a question, suppose I came up with something similar or even identical on my own, wrote the code and published it, and I have no clue that a patent exists, am I liable in any way? Isn’t absurd that algorithms and mathematical solutions can be patented?

Broadly speaking there does exist a defense of "innocent infringement." You can use that keyword to read about it more yourself.

IANAL but I believe it only reduces your damages in an infringement suit. It's considered your responsibility to check if something infringes on an existing patent. Yes, I know there are patents on absurd things like doubly linked lists, and the whole thing is a bit of a mess, seemingly created to give lawyers a job and present a barrier to people who can't afford to do patent discovery and all that.

As for it being absurd.... I don't know.

Would you prefer that companies never file patents, revealing their algorithms and mathematical solutions, so it never becomes public knowledge (and useable by everyone once the patent expires), and they just keep it indefinitely as trade secrets?

Because that's the alternative :(

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#238

Post by golergka »

kkielhofner wrote: post #203
golergka wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is an original implementation, but you have to admit, it sounds pretty similar to optical compressor, just with temperature sensors instead of photocells.

I'm definitely not trying to argue the validity of the patent, just saying that if you're trying to argue against the (beyond broken) patent system there are far better egregious examples of completely ridiculous patents that have been granted.

Oh, please don't get me wrong — I'm in awe of this system and definitely think it's worth the patent! I just pointing out that it is essentially the same overall principle, but it doesn't make it any less awesome.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#239

Post by [deleted] »

kkielhofner wrote: post #206
zamadatix wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt e.g. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others have been shipping >100 million laptops per year longer than this patent has been around with most, if not all, without the feature primarily because Apple was one of many (and not the last) to file a patent on their implementation of a common feature in the sound industry and they are now afraid of and upreprade for legal battles related to making laptops. More likely few ju…

We're saying the same thing. They don't care because it doesn't impact sales enough to care. If some R&D person in these orgs took interest in this it would get smacked down by PMs, execs, etc because it doesn't matter and they don't care. That's all well before it even gets to legal where this patent would be discovered. With these factors compounded it doesn't happen - and Apple has a tiny edge on what is probably…

[deleted]

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#240

Post by foobiekr »

kkielhofner wrote: post #82

Interesting the author says “other manufacturers don’t bother”. Unsurprisingly the real reason is “Apple was granted a patent on this over a decade ago and no one is risking an Apple patent infringement lawsuit over laptop speakers”. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130329898 EDIT: I say granted because that’s how most people understand patents and when they take effect. What really matters on the timeline here…

So is the thesis here that there is no other way to have non-crap sound on a laptop than this Apple patent? No alternative? No patent-non-infringing approach?

Because if not, the real reason is as the author suggests: other manufacturers don't bother.

I have been working a long time - decades - in a part of the industry that is not just patent happy but patent berserk and it has never been my experience that other approaches are not available when a single approach is patent-walled off.

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