I think, for the sake of his challenge (to find one good software patent granted in the last year), he is allowing the challenger to assume that those three other conditions are fulfilled simply because they would be much harder to argue about.
This is a good point. I've been involved in IP, as an inventor, and also dealing with freedom-to-operate issues, though I'm not a lawyer. The advice that I've gotten from lawyers is that the holy grail is a single piece of prior art reading on every element of the primary claim (or of the claim that is getting in your way). Obviousness and the other criteria are much harder to argue.
