Reading the press release it appears the WCP is adopting the alignment via magnets as the standard. And Qi2 will remain the standard with no gotchas.

Very good news, the editorializing on these blogposts always throws me for a loop.

Once you agree to make your patents part of a standard, the standard committee forces all patent holders to license their patents under FRAND.

Yep. Historically though, Apple's standards have been less about creating convergent technology and more about reinforcing revenue streams. Look at the entire MFi line, a 'standard' that was defined by high-margin Chinese junk that slapped Apple icons on their Bluetooth smart speaker. There wasn't a Cambrian explosion of innovative iPhone tools, but instead a sea of useless iDogs and plastic boomboxes.

Apple's greed has clearly hurt their own ecosystem in the past. They've made it completely obvious that their goal is indiscriminate rent collection, and I'd appreciate if that attitude would remain isolated from the ideals of open computing as a whole.

> Yep. Historically though, Apple's standards have been less about creating convergent technology and more about reinforcing revenue streams. Look at the entire MFi line, a 'standard'

That was never a licensed standard overseen by a standards body.

Apple contributed to the H.264 standard, and is also a major contributor to the USB C standard, as well as the Thunderbolt standard.

> They've made it completely obvious that their goal is indiscriminate rent collection, and I'd appreciate if that attitude would remain isolated from the ideals of open computing as a whole.

You realize that’s how the entire industry works right? Cellular standards and most video and modern audio codecs are also licensed via a patent pool.

There is no such thing as “open computing” where nothing is licensed from patent holders for anything that the vast majority of people would find usable.

Apple certainly has the legal autonomy to do all of this, I'm not disputing that. My point is that through these decisions, their behaviors obviously constitute market abuse. Something is gravely wrong if you can behave in the manner Apple has and become the world's largest company.

So is everyone else who you have to license from to create a modern cell phone also engaging in “market abuse”? Do you realize how much money both ARM and Qualcomm make from each cellphone?

Do you realize how much Google makes from the patents they bought from Motorola?

> Apple's standards have been less about creating convergent technology and more about reinforcing revenue streams

a) Apple's "standards" are not a proper standard by any definition.

b) Their proprietary connectors e.g. Lightning, MagSafe have always been developed when they have believed there was a better user experience available. When there wasn't they have adopted the industry standard e.g. HDMI, USB-C, SD.

c) Apple is a massive company that hinges on having a superior user experience to the competition. The idea that programs such as MFI would compromise this in order to create an insignificant revenue stream is illogical.

the F stands for Fair, not Free.

I never said anything differently.

What patents? I've only seen design patents. Alphabet has a patent on using magnets for alignment: US7026789B2