@Anonymoist Cowyard
Blame Google for the FAT thing, there's absolutely no reason why they had to use the FAT filesystem for SD cards in Android. FAT is actually quite ill-suited to getting decent performance out of flash, and Linux already includes other filesystems that are designed for flash.
SD cards are used in Android phones not for file transfer, but for adding to the installed flash storage, so what the hell difference does it make if your PC can read the card once the phone has formatted it? If it really HAD to, the problem could be easily solved by having people download a free driver from Google. I guess you'd lose the ability to have your phone directly read a card from your camera, but honestly, who the hell does that? Someone could build an app that lets you read FAT formatted SD cards if it was really an issue, and pay Microsoft the royalties (25 cents for each device is the price they charge for cameras) out of the money people would pay for the app (probably a princely $0.99)
I doubt this patent accounts for much when there are nearly 200 others, but whoever made the decision to use FAT for the SD cards in Android should be fired for incompetence. There was absolutely no reason to do this, and everyone knew that Microsoft had previously asserted ownership of FAT through patents so they should have known it would happen to them. The fact they didn't fix this in Android 4.0 after the lawsuits were already an issue is even stupider on their part.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
