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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

It probably also means it will be built-in to Andriod next and then probably Windows itself. That could negatively impact Flux the product, which sucks for him.

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F.lux is free software and they've said outright that as devices / systems implement color shifting as built-in systems, they've accomplished their goal.

Well, on the other hand, their website says this:

> f.lux is patent pending. Do you make a cell phone, display, lighting system, or other cool sleep tech, and want to talk about collaboration? Email us: support@justgetflux.com

https://justgetflux.com/

It's quite possible that Apple has already obtained a license from them.

That's not Apple's MO, but anything is possible.

Apple regularly licenses patents when it agrees they are valid. That doesn't make the news. Sometimes they disagree and that makes the news.

Not only does it not make the news, it's often confidential.

Why not? They 'license' plenty of things without using their brand name publically, like Gorilla Glass

Sure it is. They licenced Microsoft's Exchange protocols.

Licensing from a fellow giant who will absolutely take you to court if you don't and repurposing the ideas of small indie developers are entirely different things.

I could be wrong, but I don't think Apple has a history of violating patents from practicing small software developers. Seems like they're pretty much only sued by patent trolls.

If they are truly doing this for the benefit of the community then why isn't f.lux open source?

Yes, but it's much better that this stuff is built in natively to the OS. F.lux and equivalents I have used on Android often are gltichy given that they interact with the video system.

It's not just Android: on both Windows and Linux, F.lux seems to interact badly with certain Intel video chipsets, and often just turns on and off continuously until I reboot the system. It's great software, but having it native to the OS would be even better. I hope the other vendors follow Apple's lead here.

Hopefully then, OSX as well. I probably spend as much time (sadly) on my macbook as I do in front of my iPhone at night. F.lux is a lifesaver, but I'd prefer it builtin to the OS.

Seems likely. They share lots of code and when one gets a feature the other tends to get it within a release or two if it makes any sense.

Hoping OSX is next.

You can install f.lux for OSX and it works very well. Though I am sure the new Apple functionality will make its way to OSX too.

There's some annoying glitches in the Mac OS implementation. In particular, the profile gets reset to normal for a second or two when certain applications (particularly OpenGL games) start up or exit, and when the screensaver is unlocked.

While that's true, f.lux handles edge cases in important ways -- letting you disable it for certain apps or time periods, as well as "movie mode." As much as I'd like to see this feature be built into the OS, Apple tends to simplify away a lot of fiddly preferences by choosing what they hope are sensible defaults, and as much as I appreciate that in theory, in practice this might be one of those areas where fiddly preferences are superior.

That may be because creating an OpenGL context on Mac OS would reset the Color LookUp table, which f.lux would then have to refresh.

Annoying, but possibly not f.lux's fault.

Yep. It's one of the first things I install on a new machine, via Homebrew Cask.

Cyanogenmod has had it for a while now.

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