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“f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

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Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#71

Post by thedufer »

phn wrote: post #34

I love f.lux but sheesh, their stance looks like they're just playing the game to get their stuff on the app store, ignoring why apple doesn't want them there. What APIs are they using exactly? I can see why apple might not want some app that messes with the display's color (controlled user experience and all that), and (please someone correct me if I'm wrong here) potentially access everything that's written on the…

CLUT is explained well enough elsewhere in this thread that I won't repeat, but it seems very clear that the API allows them to change color palettes but does not do anything like read/write access to the screen. As far as I can tell, the worst thing they could do with it is make the screen go all one color so nothing is visible. Which would suck for the user, but the app writer gains nothing and would be quickly caught (if it even made it through the review process).

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#72

Post by untog »

coldtea wrote: post #56
hannob wrote: post #6

Seems you haven't understood the Apple world. You get fancy designs. You loose your freedom to install what you want. They decide, not you. That's the deal. Live with it or don't buy their products. (I choose the latter.)

I think you don't understand it either. While I do "lose the freedom to install what I want" (outside of the 1.5 millions apps that I can install that is), I get more than "fancy designs". I get a system where progress and adoption is faster, I get far less (close to statistical noise) malware compared to Android (none, actually, if I stick to top tier apps -- whereas there are Android phones that came with malware p…

Sure, the OPs point was stated somewhat flippantly but the point still stands. If an average user owns an Apple device, they cannot install apps that are not on the App Store. Talking about what apps are available just seems like clouding the issue.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#73

Post by untog »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #53
chillacy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would counter that there are people whom you do not want to have root. As sudo says, with great power comes great responsibility. Having clueless users being able to break the sandbox would do them more harm. So while root would be useful to some consumers, the majority would be better off without it.

It doesn't have to be either or. Having/ setting up an admin/root account should be an option, not the default. But it _should_ be an option for those of us who do have the abilities to use it wisely.

Then get an Android device. Yes, I know that sounds absolutist, but not having root is part of the proposition Apple offers users.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#74

Post by fnordsensei »

hannob wrote: post #6

Seems you haven't understood the Apple world. You get fancy designs. You loose your freedom to install what you want. They decide, not you. That's the deal. Live with it or don't buy their products. (I choose the latter.)

It's a delicate balance between security and freedom, and I imagine that it is something that Apple and other device makers juggle constantly. In this case, it means slower adoption of certain kinds of functionality. Like you say, it's something you get to live with, which I do as I use Apple products.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#75

Post by kup0 »

izacus wrote: post #19
specialist wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Apple, one gets (more) freedom from harassment. My partner is switching back from Android to iPhone. Her latest software update embedded ads everywhere and borked the contacts. It's too much. Some of us are older, tired of doing tech supp, and just want stuff to work.

And you can get stuff that works without supporting closed ecosystems. Age is a bad excuse to not take a moment to check what you're buying.

Or maybe for some of us it's okay to use a closed ecosystem as long as we understand the limitations that come with it? Maybe it's worth it for what we perceive as the benefits of such a system?

"Age is a bad excuse" Do we need an excuse for using a closed ecosystem? It's a choice and one that doesn't have to be justified to anyone but ourselves.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#76

Post by conistonwater »

coldtea wrote: post #51
lispit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

> It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production. On the other hand, since nobody else has done it (or patented it yet), real life proves that it's not that "obvious". Like the "egg of Columbus" some th…

Obvious or not is a bit of a red herring. The key test should be whether somebody would have done the same thing without a patent. If they would have, then a patent is unnecessary - the government shouldn't be in the business of granting arbitrary monopolies, only those monopolies that specifically promote something, for example, research. If a patent is granted for a thing that would have been done anyway, then that patent is a kind of a dead loss for society.

In the case of flux I think it's relatively clear that it would have been done without a patent, but maybe some people would disagree.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#77

Post by lispit »

coldtea wrote: post #51
lispit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

> It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production. On the other hand, since nobody else has done it (or patented it yet), real life proves that it's not that "obvious". Like the "egg of Columbus" some th…

I said "obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production." In the past people did other hacks with CLUTs (like some early 3D games baking gamma correction into the CLUT so that proper linear lighting could be displayed without an expensive postprocessing pass). If you were aware of the blue light effect (I'm not a sleep scientist, I don't know how long they've been aware of it) and had some low-level graphics programming knowledge, I don't think it would require great leaps to come up with this solution. It's just that no one else was interested in or aware of this problem.

Regardless of whether it was obvious or not, I hate the idea of extremely simple solutions being locked up behind patents, keeping the world today worse for the sake of hypothetical future innovations. It seems especially scummy the way they're trumpeting over social media about the harm that blue light causes while quietly trying to profit over an extremely simple solution to it. More than likely they know that Apple will never allow this on their app store because of the potential for abuse the necessary APIs would provide, and their end game is hoping the angry mobs will convince Apple to implement this as an official feature (and thus, pay them royalties). And more than likely, Apple would have implemented this years ago, had f.lux been an open source student research program with no patent applications attached.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#78

Post by CamperBob2 »

coldtea wrote: post #68
CamperBob2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where innovative insights are hidden from the rest of us, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. There is absolutely no reason for us to grant…

> There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where the innovative methods are locked up, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. I actually disagree with both -- let R&D happen by public…

But that said, I don't see why the people who did this "obviously" don't need a "fair chance to recoup their R&D investment". Does it say anywhere that the R&D investment must be huge?

Rather than haggling over what constitutes a "huge" investment, let's generalize the question a bit. True or false: we'd be better off if everything that could be patented under the present USPTO rules was patented.

If your answer is "true," we're done here.

If your answer is "false," then you agree with me that the current criteria for patent grants are inappropriate and counterproductive.

Because that's not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M's post-it notes.

Correct, and we need to ask what we got in return for allowing 3M to patent Post-It notes. If something is that trivial and that inexpensive to develop, then there's no need to incentivize it. We already have an institution called a "market" that's well-suited to sort out the winners and losers.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#79

Post by joosters »

kobayashi wrote: post #47
joosters wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? It's commercial software, and they are nice enough to let you use a copy for free. They aren't (AFAIK) doing anything remotely malicious, like grabbing user data or bundling malware. It doesn't add advertising to your computer. (I'm not sure if f.lux does any update checking, which some people might count as unacceptable)

Why would people find update checking unacceptable?

It's a form of monitoring. Some update checks run whenever you start the program, so in the case of a program like f.lux, the developer gets to see exactly when you turn on and use your computer. Or, the update check might run periodically, in which case it's a constant survey of who in the world is running your code. That alone is a vast amount of information.

Also, many programs send a lot of details about your computer to the developer. They might send back hardware details, MAC addresses, lists of other running programs, and so on. All of which may seem innocuous but could still include personal information.

Re: “f.lux has been ready to ship for iOS for four years, but we need Apple's help.”

#80

Post by lispit »

morgante wrote: post #64
lispit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

If it's so obvious, how come nobody else does it? Also, to be clear, I doubt they're getting a patent on "changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain" but rather on the specific method they use for doing so.

How else would you reduce the amount of blue light emitted by a monitor using a CLUT except by changing it to reduce the amount of blue light emitted?
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