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Imagine if the secret sauce that makes Apple’s trackpads the best had been patented and disclosed. It’d be out of patent soon and we could have Windows laptops with decent trackpads.

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As it is, at least Windows laptops can try to replicate that secret sauce. Or just reverse engineer it: we're talking about software patents, and pretty much all of Apple's software is available unencrypted in binary form and can thus be reverse engineered by those with the right skills.

The idea that Apple would have a goverment-enforced monopoly on good trackpads for 20 years sounds like a far, far worse outcome to me. If it were 5 years or less, maybe...

IIRC Bezos argued that software patents should have 9 years protection, which seems like a good compromise to me.

Exactly, the whole point of patents is to avoid trade secrets. Trade secrets create much worse monopolies than the existing patent system could ever create, since their length is indeterminate. It's also hard to evaluate the ethics of a product directly without knowing its machinery.

> since their length is indeterminate

in the software world 20 years is almost as bad. by the time the patent expires the patented algorithm may no longer be relevant

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