The patent appears to allow the user to receive an email if their phone undergoes jailbreaking. If an unauthorised user jailbroke my phone, which could be done remotely, based on the jailbreakme.com hack, I'd like to know about it as soon as possible. Otherwise, they could install malware, such as a keylogger and I'd be oblivious. If I got an email to notify me of the jailbreak, I could change my passwords and reset my phone before they emptied my bank account.

I've not seen anyone else suggest this, so I'll throw it out there. Could Apple have seen Intel's upcoming low-power x86 chips and be planning to use them in the 2nd Gen iPhone? If so, they could be making sure 1st Gen users don't get lumbered with ARM binaries that they can't upgrade when Apple move to x86. By restricting 3rd party developers to interpreted JavaScript, they will make upgrades seamless.