After going through the mangled language that any patent embodies, it is clear that “conceptually” it is similar to what has been done till now, but the approach is different. On the whole, the basic difference seems to be that linux uses chrooting, android uses separate users, Qubes adds a virtualization layer to achieve the above and Apple goes one further (not necessarily better) and makes it real/physical separate processor instead of a virtual one.
However, I’m still not sold on this and it doesn’t seem foolproof. (I’m not a security expert by any means, so please take the below with a tablespoon full of salt and you are free to add corrections or throw me out the window. 😉