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Comment by KeytarHero | Hacker News Reader

That only covers the mic/ground pinout, though. As far as the remote buttons working goes, assuming the info in the post is correct, it is Apple not wanting to play fair:

> Additionally, Apple has patents on their TRRS connection- in fact on the resistances (the actual ohm resistance in-line on the controls- not to get scientific or anything) so that the headphones are designed to work only with Apple products

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I think a better reason than "not wanting to play fair" is that the Apple implementation preserves the correct operation of the mic even while the remote is being pressed. Apple does it using a custom chip within the remote that superimposes an ultrasonic tone on the mic signal which can be cleanly filtered out, whereas resistor-based signalling works by shorting the mic signal to ground which either mutes or attenuates the mic (depending on the specific button and resistance involved).

Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking. Patents on standards tend to cause more standards to spring up, which overall increases both consumer confusion (wait, is this one compatible with my device?) and costs for manufacturers (either by requiring extra hardware to detect what it's plugged into, or extra SKUs that hurt economies of scale).

I'm certainly not an "all patents are bad" kind of person, but this one is definitely a bad patent that Apple filed for anti-competitive purposes that ends up hurting everyone but them.

I disagree - a simple solution exists, which means you cannot use the mic and a button at the same time. Apple invested time and money to solve this problem in a non-trivial way; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that headset manufacturers wanting to use Apple's solution should pay royalties

I can't believe the time and money they "invested" was at all significant, certainly not enough to justify any non-trivial amount of royalties.

But frankly I just don't care about Apple's costs: I'm far more interested in the broader economic effects of moves like this, and it's clear to me that both consumers and device-ecosystem manufacturers are harmed economically by patents like this.

So who "wins"? Do we grant the monopoly because Apple is oh so clever (they're really not, in this case), and allow Apple to enrich itself at the detriment of others, or do we look out for the greater good? I argue the latter is the correct choice in a civilized society.

>Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking.

Either you don't believe in patents at all, or this is a fair patent. Apple did find that workaround, others had lots of time until's Apple entry to find it, patent it themselves or open it up.

One way to look at this is that Apple used a broken patent system to achieve an unfair result. There is no way an arbitrary assortment of resistances should be patentable.

The fact that someone else could potentially do a bad thing does not absolve you of the responsibility for doing that bad thing.

>There is no way an arbitrary assortment of resistances should be patentable.

Indeed. Which is why they didn't patent an "arbitrary assortment of resistances", but a technique that so happens to include one.

> Either you don't believe in patents at all, or this is a fair patent.

Completely false dichotomy. Patents are there to promote innovation, not to fracture technology choices, make things difficult and confusing for consumers, and disproportionately raise costs for manufacturers. There's a balance to be found between the economic pluses granted to the patent holder and the minuses inflicted on everyone else due to the patent, and in this case I feel the balance is all wrong.

I guess Apple's approach makes sense if one expect someone to want to listen to music while also using the mic to talk to someone. Otherwise the advent of a conversation will preclude the use of the music, and thus any need to use the controls.

Although this far predates Siri and dictation and such, there is are now valid reasons when you want to use the mic and listen to music at the same time.

When we talk in real life, or on the phone, we don't have to stop listening to the others when we speak. So this isn't about just music, but also voip, conferences (Facetime, Skype, etc).

I very often need to change the volume while speaking to someone, I'm not certain but I think the play/pause button acts as a mute button while in a conversation as well.

So one can patent the resistance levels? From the USPO site

> any person who “invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent,”

https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-inform...

I wonder how that specific resistance level meets those requirements when basically any other nearby level would do. It's like patenting spaghettis of a given length or pizzas of a given size.

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