The thing that is patentable isn't "a vibration". It's the exact, specific means through which you produce that vibration.

We've gone from completely dumb eccentric rotating mass vibration to trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking, or the Ice Cubes demo in in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch[0], both of which use linear resonant actuators. Those actuators are themselves a complex enough piece of technology to warrant a patent, and the techniques to simulate the feel or real physical objects using those actuators are pretty damn non-trivial as well.

As a general rule, I find that the patent system is problematic but, within the scope of the system as it exists today, these are perfectly reasonable things to patent.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q

That little buzz feels like a click on my Air's trackpad and like a tap on my iPhone's keyboard. Any other vibration thingy I came across feels like a vibration thingy, not like a click, not a tap.

As nobody else seems to care or is able to build the same, maybe it is worth a dollar or two. Though 5.7B is a bit much.

i assume this matter was discussed

Why do people cry foul like they've lost a limb when OpenAI steals Apple IP, but then shirk away from condemning Apple stealing Taction or Masimo's IP?

The community has to pick a lane. Either IP theft is good and promotes competition, or IP theft is bad and we have to apply the law equally.

My issue with stuff like this is their work is not worth $6 billion dollars. Yes it takes time to develop this stuff but it isn't ground-breaking work and isn't especially novel. A room of experienced engineers, given the same constraints, would likely be able to come to the same design conclusions without much time or expense. Patents in general have this problem. A lot of it is a race to patent as much obvious and fringe-not-immediately-useful-today stuff as possible and it unfortunately works a lot of the time.

Yeah but they claim it still infringes on the patent and the jury accepted Taction’s infringement case. Im curious of the outcome in the end.

Just because apple provides a (likely) self-serving statement, doesn't mean it is accurate. Evidently the jury found it to not be convincing