The Palm Apple battle just gets better every day. Common belief a few months ago was that Palm was headed for a legal show down with Apple, particularly after Timothy Cook’s statements at Apple’s earnings call. Palm immediately shot back with “We got patents too”. So are these patents saving Palm from being sued by Apple and even giving them the courage to sync with iTunes apparently without Permission? Make no mistake, this is one gutsy move because for one, Palm knows third party developers like us can fill this niche for them and thus they don’t have to deal with the headache of Apple’s anger. Even worse is Apple intentionally breaking the functionality. I personally have been a victim of this. It is very possible Palm holds patents for the ringer switch, threaded sms and many more features you see on the iPhone. Thus any legal attack by Apple can be countered by an even bigger attack by Palm that can put the iPhone in jeopardy and cause Apple more headache. So, right now it seems as though Palm is holding Apple at Patent ransom.
Apple definitely wants to protect iPhone features like multi touch. Word is that they essentially punked Google to not implement multi touch on the G1. However, Apple’s beef with Palm goes way deeper than intellectual property. If you have no knowledge of Steve Jobs and Jon Rubinstein's relationship, you can sum it up in the following movie theatrical release.
In Silicon Valley, there was no Lieutenant Steve Jobs trusted more than Jonathan Rubinstein. He personally gave Ruby the green light to build the iPod. A complex 15 year relationship forged by epic disagreements, shouting matches, risky technical gambles; all in the drive to build the best computers and gadgets in the world. They made history together and in 2006 the trusted lieutenant nobly retired. Or so we thought!
Now branded as a traitor, the iPod legend is helping lead the arch-enemy, using everything he learnt from Apple and in the process getting other key lieutenants to defect. It’s a story of trust, betrayals, backdating stock scandals, jealousy and revenge. This is the mother of all Smartphone wars! This movies is not yet rated
Any smart book publisher should just go ahead and sign a deal for Jon Rubenstein’s memoir. His tell all book will probably be one for the ages.
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