Apple's dedicated bloodletting in the courts - following the late Steve Jobs' diktat of 'thermonuclear war' against Android devices - has long looked more like a squabble over basic geometry and debating the rightsholder to the rounded rectangle.
Now, the US Patent Office has granted Cupertino a broad, broad patent that on first glance appears to deem Apple the rightful owner.
Apple has been granted patent no. D670,286, the Verge reports, which is about as vague as it gets for a design patent.
The long running Cupertino-provoked skirmishes between Apple and its rivals, most notably Samsung, have brought up some odd talking points in the courts. Samsung argued that it was actually Stanley Kubrick, in the late 60s, who created the archetypal tablet and Apple has no claim to the rather obvious design of a rectangle with smoothed over corners.
Regardless, the following shape is now the property of Apple. Cupertino holds dominion over this rectangle:
Churlish though Apple's cases may appear, it's not a difficult leap of logic to argue the company is - legitimately - worried about other players entering the tablet space and stealing even more of its share of a product category it hasn't significantly contributed to since the iPad 2.
When a human misses his chance for Depth as he traverses the Width because he'd overshot the mark, that road leads straight to Devolution, to becoming the fully thinking animal or fully feeling vegetable. To be the super stupid or the exceedingly dumb, the latter supporting the former to facilitate their conjoined leap into The Abyss in a, "Been There, Done That" embrace. No wonder The Dumb are queueing around the block in feverish anticipation of the drippings from their Stupid Master. You know, to imagining having the ability to escape dumbness by buying into Da Klub/stupidity.
There is only one road for The Dumb and that is The Stupid one, Stupidity-Dumbness being co-latencies because they are co-limits. More dumb than stupid is the idea that just because one did something first, one has a right to that entitlement as well as calling other thieves. Afterall, did anyone pay for the concept of Zero, much like the idea that parents own their children. Truly, money-mindedness make for a stupid-dumb existence. No wonder such behaviours are exclusive if only to spin them out of evolution whenever possible.
1) If you give them a gun and they use it, you can't blame them. The problem is the patent laws or patent office.
2) People like dumbinglystupid may aspire to be Drashek, but they do not make enough sense to succeed.