In retrospect, much of what we did may have looked obvious, but it wasn't. It was the result of countless hours of design sessions, user studies, and working through multiple on device implementations to see what worked.
Just as much work was put into the design as into any other invention.
When the iPhone came out, people were amazed at how well everything worked, at how obvious everything was. A lot of that was due to the focus on design, making everything just right. Slide to unlock was genius in it's simplicity!
Soon those design elements became "the obvious way to do things" and people then got upset at Apple for "patenting the obvious".
It wasn't obvious. Ask Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft about it. They all made smartphones for years before iPhone came out.
I get that patents in general irritate people, but I'll argue that if a company has spent a lot of resources researching how to do something properly, that having a way to protect that investment isn't a bad thing for society.
It also helps prevent stagnation, as other ways of accomplishing the same goal now have to be researched.
It can be a bad thing if there is exactly "one true ultimate design" that a single company gets a lock down on, but do any of us think that is really likely given the incredibly narrow scope of design patents?