I personally have no problem with the whole Apple patents brouhaha. Steve Jobs did a miraculous job on "dumbing-down" the smart phone, to the point where it now has no buttons at all, and the only thing the user can do is finger-paint on it. The touchscreen may seem like a cool approach to a user interface, but it also subtly locks the user into being merely a consumer of information, never a producer.

The rest of the cell phone industry has blindly rushed down the rabbit hole right behind Apple. The jury really was right -- the whole world now is filled with iPhones and iPhone wannabes. These corporations needed a good smack in the side of the head to remind them that Apple's way is not the only possible way to design products. Stuff like pinch-to-zoom is popular because Apple made it popular, not because it is necessarily the best way to do things.

Right now, I don't see _anyone_ trying to actually compete with Apple. The default response seems to be what Nokia did -- just give up, dump your entire internal R&D department, and license the latest iOS clone from Microsoft or Google. Maybe if Apple wins enough patent cases, somebody will get the hint and go back to designing a device that isn't an iPhone.