I would be surprised if Apple didn't have patents on their mic array, meaning that another manufacturer would ideally prefer if their setup is different and incompatible to reduce the chance of accidental patent infringement.
I'd search to see, but reading patents is an info-hazard which increases your chance of infringing, so I've quit reading them entirely.
Maybe they're doing something new, but beamforming microphone arrays can be found in just about any brand of laptop if you go high end enough.
I do think most such devices will present themselves as less capable than they actually are (I.E. just a stereo input) for maximum OS compatibility, but the technique isn't Apple exclusive as far as I know.
> beamforming microphone arrays can be found in just about any brand of laptop if you go high end enough.
Are you sure? I’ve never heard a laptop microphone better than the MacBook. Maybe they do beamform and there’s other issues, but
Maybe they can still install the array, and we can simply "apt-get install illegal-package".
But all joking aside, there is a tremendous amount of literature on the mathematics of beamforming. I'd be surprised if any of it is patented in a way that isn't circumventable.
There is a customer who has deployed beamforming microphones for decades. They do however have a somewhat different goal and medium.
Yes, I'm sure they have some patents because that's what big companies do/have to do. But the basic idea has been around for a long time, not just in audio but also in microwave space/domain. So I'm sure there's plenty of prior art.