I noted this above, but what is analogous between doors of a bygone era and accessing a touch-based device. Swiping a portion of the screen is the obvious component, but the skeuomorph isn't, I'm yet to see a good rationale for why this is more obvious than the many other opening simple-gesture skeuomorphs that could have been chosen.

I can think over many other more logical/closer skeuomorphs, which forms the basis of my question: was apple's choice a naturally occurring one, or their design choice. This isn't about patents, it's just a mind experiment as to understand if this is as straight forward as it seems in retrospect. (Because good design always appears obvious in retrospect.)

I'm yet to be presented with an answer to this, this is the crux of originality.