Innovation: #iPhone 5 release date, #iOS 5 based #iPad 3 reject #Android

Even as Apple is within minutes of announcing the release date for the iPhone 5 with iOS 5 and the only real mystery is whether the iPad 3 will come with it, Apple’s legal department is quietly carrying out a scorched earth policy in which the Android platform is rapidly in danger of disappearing from store shelves. In some nations it’s already happened. With so many Android-based phones and tablets sporting hardware designs which have borrowed generously from Apple’s iPad and iPhone (here’s more on the iPhone 5 release date), Apple has had a fairly easy time of taking Android manufacturers like HTC and Samsung to court and walking away with crushing rulings. Various governments have joined the fray, including that of the United States, elevating it from a corporate dispute to an international trade issue.

And yet even as Apple attempts to lay waste to competing products which were built with what it says is stolen technology, some skeptics, even among Apple’s user base, have cried foul. It’s not that Apple isn’t right in protecting its innovations. It’s that they feel Apple needs the competition from Android, or from some other competing platform, so as to keep Steve Jobs and company on their toes with each new model. I say bullshit.