Thread

US jury says Apple owes record $5.7B in haptic technology patent case

77 points · 67 comments · onemoresoop

smalltorch · 1790442053 · focus · HN ↗
Wow, that's a lot of money for a little buzz. I mean what could possibly be such sacred knowledge that a vibration could even be patentable.
You spin a unbalanced thing in a circle and it creates a vibration. Make it less unbalanced and you get a smoother vibration.
1. pdpi · 1790445085 · focus · HN ↗
  The thing that is patentable isn't "a vibration". It's the exact, specific means through which you produce that vibration.
  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.
  [0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q
  1. euroderf · 1790446745 · focus · HN ↗
    > trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking
    Like my Mac's trackpad ? Can someone ELI5 how it works ? It's gotta be magic-adjacent cos when the machine locks up, the trackpad is deader than a doornail.
    zeptonix · 1790447793 · focus · HN ↗
    Have noticed exactly this behavior as well, it's one of the better indicators actually the system ain't coming back.
    rogerrogerr · 1790447959 · focus · HN ↗
    Fun fact, the other thing that can cause this is a Bluetooth mouse in a backpack that is being clicked continuously. Confused me to no end for fifteen minutes.
    redwall_hp · 1790448093 · focus · HN ↗
    It's the same technique of the "3D touch" the iPhone 6S had, though that was discontinued. Capacitive sensors measure microscopic changes in the glass, as it slightly flexes when you press it. Then a haptic motor does a little kick to simulate the feel of it being pressed down.
    They've been doing this since 2015 or so. Prior Macs didn't click on the top 1/4 of the trackpad, because there was basically a "hinge" there and the glass would actually press on a physical button.
    euroderf · 1790450781 · focus · HN ↗
    So there's a big big matrix of tiny tiny motors under the trackpad ?
    dijit · 1790451566 · focus · HN ↗
    no, it sends a large “click” across the whole surface which your finger registers as a local click, they have two large and two small haptic motors in a line iirc and they do some software magic to cancel out the click so it feels extremely localised.
    ehe78qhe · 1790453461 · focus · HN ↗
    I just tried on my macbook trackpad and if I rest a finger in on part and click with a finger in another part both fingers feel the click. But I suspect this is a feature, not a bug, for multi-touch interfaces.
    euroderf · 1790485654 · focus · HN ↗
    This sounds very complex and it explains why nobody explains it :)
    I wonder if there's a teardown that has really dug into it.
  2. nomel · 1790458165 · focus · HN ↗
    It's literally a voice coil with a mass on it. Literally anyone who has ever played with a solenoid, and hooked it up to a speaker, has made one. I did it when I was a kid, decades ago, and watched it vibrate on the table and in my hand. When I tried the first haptic thing I knew exactly how they did it. It's so incredibly obvious I don't understand how it's even patentable, with all the prior "make thing vibrate with electromagnet" work.
    It's not really "high tech", it's just tuned well, with some high power for the size.
    TeMPOraL · 1790497472 · focus · HN ↗
    I think the bit where you tune it to share around a big mass around it may be the non-obvious part.
    Because frankly, I played with and disassembled many speakers of various sizes too when I was young, and one thing I internalized then is that speakers are piss poor at shaking anything except their own membrane. You can't just make things vibrate with a small speaker glued to a random thing. That's why as a kid I was not surprised to discover vibrators are spinning some unbalanced weight around - obviously that would shake things (as experienced by anyone who saw a washing machine decide to take a walk).
    nomel · 1790638236 · focus · HN ↗
    That's why I say solenoid, not speaker.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.