Speaker engineers have been doing this for decades too. Not necessarily by the specific method chosen by Apple (didn't read the patent), or with laptop speakers

Speaker engineers have been doing this for decades too. Not necessarily by the specific method chosen by Apple (didn't read the patent), or with laptop speakers, but dynamic control of signals to achieve greater loudness within a specific power rating has been a thing for a long time AFAIK. Here's an example: https://testing.eminence.com/d-fend/ https://testing.eminence.com/d-fend/