You spin a unbalanced thing in a circle and it creates a vibration. Make it less unbalanced and you get a smoother vibration.
The community has to pick a lane. Either IP theft is good and promotes competition, or IP theft is bad and we have to apply the law equally.
Tell me you’re not so thick
There isn’t one mind. We are unique individuals with different opinions. Opinions of an individual can even be contradictory!
The aspect of "you are granted a monopoly on a technology for a period of time" is something that is especially bad.
As nobody else seems to care or is able to build the same, maybe it is worth a dollar or two. Though 5.7B is a bit much.
We've gone from completely dumb eccentric rotating mass vibration to trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking, or the Ice Cubes demo in in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch[0], both of which use linear resonant actuators. Those actuators are themselves a complex enough piece of technology to warrant a patent, and the techniques to simulate the feel or real physical objects using those actuators are pretty damn non-trivial as well.
As a general rule, I find that the patent system is problematic but, within the scope of the system as it exists today, these are perfectly reasonable things to patent.
"Apple's Taptic Engine is fundamentally different from Taction's technology, which Taction's own testing of Apple's products confirmed during trial," Apple said in response
spacedcowboy•1h ago
I wonder what it’ll be like after appeal.