[citation][nom]santiagoanders[/nom]I thought patents had to be non-obvious. Stupid patent office.[/citation]
while the idea may be obvious, the implementation is not. If it was obvious we would have this kind of feature in systems already. Also, you cannot simply patent the idea to change GPU drivers on the fly, there is a specific model on how to do it which is patented. As noted by InvalidError there are potentially other ways of doing this which the patent would not cover.
[citation][nom]SDCards[/nom]Unlike Apple though, Microsoft would probably be happy to license the patent.[/citation]
This is exactly what I love about MS. They understand that they are not alone in the tech universe. they are a big business, and they have their hands in a lot of pots, but they are more than willing to lease out patents to others who are innovating. They even lease out to direct competitors such as some Linux distros (including Android). They learned their lesson back in the '90s that if they are going to stay on top, and remain their own company without ridiculous amounts of Gov't intrusion, then they have to play nice with others.