More fallout from the Venture Beat story that Google removed multi-touch based upon Apple’s request. John Gruber via Daring Fireball corroborates the report based on a source who works at Apple who said Google actually showed Apple legal a pre-release prototype of the G1.
In addition to multi-touch, Apple reportedly balked at the use of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack that seemed to infringe on a patent describing “controlling software using buttons connected by a standard 3.5mm jack“.
As an interesting postscript, Gruber believes the large number of Apple employees now working for Palm on the Pre has resulted in a cold relationship between the two companies. He adds that Palm is offering Apple engineers a 1.5 increase on their salary to jump ship.
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