Advertising is coming to software products, make no doubt. Microsoft's . Some bloggerati speculate Apple filed this patent merely to beat Microsoft to the punch.

Maybe. But even if mandatory advertising schemes come to pass (and they've been tried before, never successfully), I think it will take about 15 minutes before somebody figures out how to break them.

If you want people to pay attention, you need to make the ads more entertaining. Apple knows that as well as anyone; the company makes some of the best ads in the computer biz. So I cannot imagine Apple forcing people to watch boring brain-dead commercials. Fake Steve may be right; there's clearly something else afoot.

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