Apple’s Wireless-Charging Patent Might Actually Free Us From Wires(wired.com)
wired.com
Apple’s Wireless-Charging Patent Might Actually Free Us From Wires
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/apple-wireless-charging-patent
9 comments
Wouldn't it be great though, if they could get it absolutely right? Bloggers had complained before that Lumia has wireless charging and iphone doesn't, but this article answers that problem very well - Apple isn't just trying to solve wired problem with a 20% improvement, they want a 200% improvement. I hoep they can get this right. Would sure be great to have all my i-devices charge as they sit here on the desk.
I hope Apple don't get it right, because I'm really not sure I can handle hearing: "wah wah Apple didn't actually /invent/ wireless charging, you know" attached to every mention of the iCharge (circa 2015).
And i hope Apple doesn't get it right because of the next patent wars about that stuff and because of all that media buzz again and again. Makes me sick.
Patents don't free us from anything.
Edison bulb and it's associated patents freed the public from combustion light or otherwise dark evenings...
Actually, a large number of people were working on the light bulb at the same time, and Edison's patent probably slowed down the pace of innovation by making it harder for inventors in the USA (apparently 'the Board of Patent Control' filed over 600 lawsuits for patent infringement) to work on the problem and shrinking the size of the market for inventors working overseas.
Edison is a poor example anyway, since he was basically a patent troll in this case (found guilty of patent infringment in a UK court) and was only able to work because he had ignored a UK patent (Swan's). Had he been abided by it, he could have made no contribution (Shock! He 'stole' the idea!). He improved on Swans design, but at the same time Swan also improved on his design. When Edison had his breakthrough, Swan had already installed electric lighting in a number of houses and when the two finally collaborated, the joint company used Swans newer design which was the better of the two. Wikipedia has this to say:
"In America, Edison had been working on copies of the original light bulb patented by Swan, trying to make them more efficient. Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign that claimed that he was the real inventor. Swan, who was less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
Edison is a poor example anyway, since he was basically a patent troll in this case (found guilty of patent infringment in a UK court) and was only able to work because he had ignored a UK patent (Swan's). Had he been abided by it, he could have made no contribution (Shock! He 'stole' the idea!). He improved on Swans design, but at the same time Swan also improved on his design. When Edison had his breakthrough, Swan had already installed electric lighting in a number of houses and when the two finally collaborated, the joint company used Swans newer design which was the better of the two. Wikipedia has this to say:
"In America, Edison had been working on copies of the original light bulb patented by Swan, trying to make them more efficient. Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign that claimed that he was the real inventor. Swan, who was less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
Doesn't having a large field like this require a lot more power? I thought a lot of this long distance charging stuff was very wasteful?
While I appreciate Apple for this, this article looks more like an Apple advertorial by Wired.
Patents are the very definition of not freeing.
Oxymoron title.
Oxymoron title.
hmmm... your comparison is not equal. Having a patent on freedom would be Oxymoronic. A patent that frees the user from a current limitation, is not oxymoronic. It's simply unfortunate.
I would love to see Duracell or Energizer jump into the competition given that their business may have significant impact once these devices are out. I know I, for one, will throw away battery powered peripherals.
Is that really a different tech or just creating a field with more power? I suspect wireless charging consumes power even if nothing gets charged, so selling it as environment friendly is stretching it a bit.
Looks to be competition with http://www.uBeam.com should be an interesting space over the coming years.
It makes me worry about all these magnetic fields and wireless signals traveling though our bodies all the time. Twenty years from now we may all end up with cancer...
WiFi, visible light, and X-rays are all just electromagnetic radiation. The higher the frequency (or shorter the wavelength) the higher the energy per packet. In order for EMR to give you cancer, according to theory at least, the energy per packet has to be high enough to ionize atoms in your body. Specifically, in your DNA. This causes an error that, most of the time, does little or nothing. If you're very unlucky, the error will happen in a particularly bad spot and cancer can result.
It's important to note that the energy per packet rather than the number of packets that matters. It's similar to how I could fire a thousand ping-pong balls at you and you'd be fine, but one bullet would be a completely different story.
X-Rays are very short wavelength and have a relatively high probability of ionizing atoms in your body. UV light is longer in wavelength, but is still just barely ionizing. The lights in your home are probably pretty safe. WiFi is substantially longer wavelength (and lower energy per packet) than visible light, so it's even less likely to give you cancer.
Put simply, if you're worried about getting cancer from ionizing radiation you should go live in the dark in a cave as far underground as you can get before worrying about what's coming out of your cell-phone or router.
It's important to note that the energy per packet rather than the number of packets that matters. It's similar to how I could fire a thousand ping-pong balls at you and you'd be fine, but one bullet would be a completely different story.
X-Rays are very short wavelength and have a relatively high probability of ionizing atoms in your body. UV light is longer in wavelength, but is still just barely ionizing. The lights in your home are probably pretty safe. WiFi is substantially longer wavelength (and lower energy per packet) than visible light, so it's even less likely to give you cancer.
Put simply, if you're worried about getting cancer from ionizing radiation you should go live in the dark in a cave as far underground as you can get before worrying about what's coming out of your cell-phone or router.
As opposed to the other magnetic fields and "wireless signals" we're already exposed to?
Like the Earths magnetic field, our microwaves, the sun, all those "scary" things cause cancer too. How about we hold off on the crazy talk until we have something to empirically test.
Like the Earths magnetic field, our microwaves, the sun, all those "scary" things cause cancer too. How about we hold off on the crazy talk until we have something to empirically test.
To date, the only proposed approach to this problem is time division multiplexing (TDM) on each device and/or adaptive frequency tuning at the transmitter (which has regulatory issues). AFAIK, this is the same problem plaguing the other resonant wireless power transfer companies (eg. Witricity).
[I played around with a bit of this stuff during grad school. Specifically, I used non-resonant magnetic coupling to wirelessly power a swarm of robots: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2008/10/07/wirelessly-powering-sw... ]