A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

Since you seem like a fanboy who loves to make up facts without any basis. Let's iterate over the list one by one in more detail:

1. Finder Sidebar: Windows Navigation pane -> Appeared in Mac = Mac OS X 10.3 Panther = Two years after the Navigation pane appeared in Windows XP.

2. The Mac Path bar: Windows Address bar -> Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard added an optional Path bar at the bottom of folder windows to display the path of any selected file or folder. Double-clicking a folder in the path opens that folder. This feature first appeared as the Address bar in Windows Vista, which began appearing nearly a year before Leopard shipped.

3. Back and Forward navigation buttons in folder windows -> Microsoft first put the Forward and Back buttons of Web browsers into its folder windows with Windows 2000. Oddly, Apple first included only a Back button in the original Mac OS X. It wasn't until version 10.2 Jaguar that a Forward button appeared.

4. Minimizing to document windows into app icon -> Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard adds an option for minimizing, which is turned off by default. Instead of creating a new icon in the Dock, you can have a document window minimize into the application icon it belongs to, as Windows has been doing with taskbar.

5. Screen Sharing: Remote Desktop Connection -> Appeared in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which was already implemented in Windows XP.

6. Time Machine: Backup and Restore -> Really? Do I really need to prove that System Restore and Backup n Restore appeared before Time Machine??

7. System Preferences: Control Panel -> Before Mac OS X, Mac system settings were found in a set of separate files. Microsoft put all the settings in one convenient place. For Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah, Apple stole Microsoft's idea and called it System Preferences.

8. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support -> Macs have long been second-class citizens to Windows when it comes to Exchange Server. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard added native support of Exchange Server's 2007's group scheduling, contact, and mail services.

9. Command-Tab: Alt-Tab -> Well you agreed to that.

10. Terminal: Command Prompt -> Windows has had the command prompt integrated since the very first version. Apple finally added Terminal finally after the 9th version.

Love your products and be loyal to your manufacturers, that is one thing but please don't turn off the logic side of your brain!! If you are going to respond to this comment please backup your statements too.

My guess is there must have been a prior case where one patented an entire device and the patent was not able to penalize an infringer that may have had a slightly different device. It's possible the defense may have shown that the patent is only valid if the devices are in the exact same category. But who knows, this is just a guess.

I should also note that I'm a different person that the one whom you were replying to in your previous threads.

However, as I look at all the various LCD monitors that are around the office right now, I can't help but think about what would happen if there was originally a design patent on the form factor of a monitor. They all seem to have relatively similar:

- border widths - button placements - rounding of corners - status lights and their positions

The same could be said for keyboards, computer towers, even many laptops. There is probably a finite number of practical design available when building a touch screen tablet. If all of them were to be patented, then nobody could build a reasonable tablet.

In response to your second point about the scrolling: It may well be true that the scrolling implementation was non-obvious. Based on your comments, I would agree that this particular aspect is perhaps non-obvious.

I'm just worried about the number of patents being asserted, and that it is highly unlikely that all of them are non-obvious, especially based on the coverage I have read. It seems more likely that Apple hit the big one with the iPhone by building incrementally on existing technologies and techniques, then adding some nice, non-obvious features, rather than building a device so chock full of non-obvious ideas that nobody else would have developed something which was somewhat similar to what we now think of as a smart phone using similar technology.

I don't think the few non-obvious ideas, nor the fact that they brought together existing technologies should be the basis for court fights and attempts to block importation of competitors products. I understand that this was a relatively narrow case, against Samsung and not Android in general, but it seems pretty clear to me that this it is a business decision by Apple to attempt to reduce competition through the courts.

Obviously nobody in this thread is claiming such a thing. Perhaps they misunderstood your earlier point (or perhaps you made it poorly) and thus their counterpoints are irrelevant, but that is not the same thing.

You should be more charitable and less trollish in the way you choose to disagree with others.