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 paired via Bluetooth?
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
0 color0
1 color1
2 (2*color0 + color1) / 3
3 (color0 + 2*color1) / 3And is the source for this being due to patent lawsuits seriously a speculative Reddit comment?
The APM already have issues with reliability as is so i'm sure this is only bound to make people more upset.
I'm not sure where or how to get that worked, but it is a worthwhile conversation.
If Apple simply stopped selling new devices that violated the patents and selling new nerfed versions, there would be no problem. The entire problem is forced updates.
AFAIU, normally the patent rights holder couldn't recover damages from an infringer if the infringer didn't have notice. But I suppose it's possible that you now have notice, and therefore could be liable for statutory damages if you continued using the product, presuming Apple hasn't already updated your device.
(Also possible there's some other technicality saving you. I-am-not-a-patent-lawyer. But I know that with copyright such a scenario is possible even without actual notice. Copyright makes infringers out of everybody all the time. Not that people generally care or even should care. And not that it justifies automated systems that "helpfully" intervene. ;)
Which I imagine involves a lot of closely guarded secrets.
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.