My ancient Dell laptop has a "slide to unlock" mechanical catch on it, and seen such catches on old storage boxes, etc. I fail to see how making a soft analog of it constitutes non-obvious innovation.
All I know is that locking and unlocking a phone used to be a problem for some people, and they no longer have a problem with Apple's solution. I don't care what you call it, my mom can actually use this version of locking and unlocking her phone without remembering some cryptic combination of keys on the keypad.