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Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it, since the magnetic connector itself is patented, and they apparently don't license it— which is why the BatteryBox connector is such an awkward hack: https://www.getbatterybox.com/shop

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Wow.I never gave much thought to Apple's magnetic connector till.The battery box does look like an ugly hack.But what I dont get is.Its magnets attracting.What and exactly what have they patented?

Well it's their own connector too, not a standard like USB. Everything about it is likely patented.

Using a magnet to connect to the device.

You can't just reduce something to its simplest component when discussing patents. It's the specific application that matters.

I guess this would be similar to the Samsung/Apple patent wars which happened?I guess that explains why no-one else tried making anything similar.

Magnetic self-locating connectors have been around forever. I have a waffle iron from the 60's that's got one. The patented part is the specific size and shape (and pinout I guess) of that particular connector that prevents 3rd parties from making compatible adapters. Apple is far from alone in trying to profit from that shenanigan. It is, of course, profoundly wasteful for manufactures to pursue "nickle-and-dime" profits in this manner at the expense of the public and the environment. Something the cellphone charging standard in Europe tried to address.

Just goes to show that there are plenty of places where Apple doesn't do much thinking different after all.

I wonder how patenting a specific implementation of an already-known thing is allowed. Why is this considered an original invention?

Among other things, it violates the intent of patents "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

I think they've patented innovations in their thing like you can put it in either way up and it's got a chip with little lights in the end. They waffle on for pages in http://www.google.com/patents/US7311526

I'm not sure they should be able to patent fairly simple upgrades like that but I guess that's the US patent system.

I have been curious since I saw this. Does batterybox really works? And if it does then why aren't any big player licensing the tech.

How can it bypass the charging and directly power the laptop using the same connector?

That's funny. They have 4 different connectors inside the package: https://datazone-gbatteries.netdna-ssl.com/assets/buy/galler...

I'm sure they've considered it, but my first thought would be to buy a magsafe to magsafe 2 converter for each batterybox and use that as the connector.

Seems like that would be better looking, but maybe it's still impractical.

Actually that was the intention if you looked at the original crowdfunding video. But a call from Apple prevented that from happening due to licensing issues of using their converters.

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