You refer, of course, to the famous Sir Isaac Newton. Please don't confuse him with Sir Issac Newton, who was born about 26 years ago and does indeed live under a rock.

> can focus to objects 10 inches away with zero eyestrain...

JS is clearly a person under age 40.

... learning who Doc Edgerton was, and looking at his pioneering stroboscopic photos.

I agree. Is it really true that a consumer can buy an instance of the Widget Engine only when it is bundled with a great big chunk of glass covered with pixels? What if I already own a good one of those?

With that model, in this economy, the rate of uptake for Yahoo is going to be pretty darn slow.

Right, I just want both OSes to be around and develop further.

I'm actually waiting for a hardware platform better than either of these phones, which exists only in my imagination so far. And if/when it appears, its chances of having a good UI are better if both OSes remain in the market.

I could probably tolerate Android if I had to, but WinMo would be a deal-killer for sure!

You are correct, I did forget that. However, depending on when they were filed, Newton patents would be on the cusp of expiring now (at that time the term of a patent was 17 years).

As Fred and aaron also said, this new patent may have some trouble of its own with novelty or obviousness. Actually, most computing patents are probably vulnerable if the attacker has enough incentive and resources. The cross-license dodge prevents a general Armageddon, but at the price of sustaining a corrupted situation.

Clearly, Apple has the deeper pockets in this case. Does might make right?

You seem to be giving Apple credit for full foresight, and Palm none at all. In fact, most tech companies *forbid* their engineers from reading prior patents. Only the IP lawyers will be free to do this, and it's pretty easy for them to miss some implications.

If Palm doesn't have early patents with very broad claims for handheld devices, they screwed up. They could have made it almost impossible to build any kind of handheld computing device with downloadable applications, without infringing.

Did they? I don't know, but unlike with copyrights or trademarks, patent owners are free to pick and choose who they will sue, among known infringers, without diluting their rights. So their prior silence against other competition may not mean anything.

All I'm saying is, when Palm said "we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves," this is the scenario I thought of immediately.

> The likelihood of Apple granting Palm a license is slim to none.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. How do we know that the iPhone isn't infringing some Palm patents? Palm has had many years in the mobile space to build up a portfolio. For all we know, many of their patents also include claims broader than anything embodied in a Palm product.

Very often, an infringement suit is answered by a countersuit, after which the first plaintiff suddenly sees the virtue of entering into a cross-license agreement. In fact, sane IP owners usually arrive at this result before filing papers and then losing face in public.

Fuze me!

I want to compare it to my Harmony 880 for ease of use.