As an avid Apple user (my VZW iPad 4G is sitting next to my OG Epic, near the 2007 iMac I'm typing this on; my 2009 MacBook, recently upgraded to 8GB of RAM, is also nearby)...Apple is being petty.
If their hardware is so awesome (in the case of the iPad, it is) and they can stay ahead of the competition, they don't need to litigate. People can tell the difference between an iPhone and a competitor before someone even turns the device on, and Apple is eating any single manufacturer up in terms of sales/market share. What are they complaining about?
Personally, I hope that HTC, Samsung or Motorola come out with some awesome innovation, patent it, then force Apple to play nice on cross-licensing when Apple wants to get into the game. It's not like Apple hasn't copied from other manufacturers before...the pull-down notification bar in iOS 5 is very, VERY similar to the notification shade that has been in Android since its inception. Then again, it's kind of tit-for-tat; Google copied Apple's multiple-apps-in-one-icon UI element with Stacks in ICS.
Maybe, from Apple's viewpoint, it's sad that they have to actually compete for customers with Android devices that have superior hardware specs (though iOS tends to be smoother than Android despite these specs). But for the rest of us it's a very good thing.
Also, I'd rather have an Android phone than an iPhone. Fragmentation notwithstanding. For one thing, I love me some AmazonMP3 (as an actual app, not their web app that works on iOS). For another, even with the iPhone's awesome keyboard, a 3.5" screen is pretty darned small for doing useful stuff. It almost feels like an upsell for the iPad at this point