

Apple’s Wireless-Charging Patent Might Actually Free Us From Wires - kirillzubovsky
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/apple-wireless-charging-patent

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beambot
Resonant wireless power transfer has the (often undesirable) effect of de-
tuning when you have multiple resonant loads in range. In short, the "resonant
peak" dis-associates into two (or more) peaks, which ruins efficiency. Not to
mention the effects of material composition (metal => bad).

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...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2008/10/07/wirelessly-powering-swarm-robots)
]

~~~
kirillzubovsky
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.

~~~
peteretep
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).

~~~
buster
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.

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kybernetikos
Patents don't free us from anything.

~~~
headShrinker
Edison bulb and it's associated patents freed the public from combustion light
or otherwise dark evenings...

~~~
kybernetikos
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>

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seanalltogether
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?

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neya
While I appreciate Apple for this, this article looks more like an Apple
advertorial by Wired.

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hayksaakian
Patents are the very definition of not freeing.

Oxymoron title.

~~~
headShrinker
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.

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eungyu
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.

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Tichy
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.

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selectout
Looks to be competition with <http://www.uBeam.com> should be an interesting
space over the coming years.

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JamesCorwin
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...

~~~
beloch
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.

